


We Could Both Be Stars

by cecilia095



Category: New Girl
Genre: Alternate Universe, Chaptered, F/M, Matchmaking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-05
Updated: 2016-04-03
Packaged: 2018-05-24 19:42:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 29,297
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6164428
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cecilia095/pseuds/cecilia095
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Look, Winston, I appreciate you wanting Cece and I to find something as good as what you and Aly have, but you can't just push us onto your weirdo best friends." <b>AU.</b></p>
            </blockquote>





	1. ONE.

**Author's Note:**

> Basically: Winston's terrible at everything, but he's especially terrible at matchmaking. Kind of.
> 
> I wrote this because I kind of wanted to do a swap, where Winston sets up Jess with Schmidt and Cece with Nick and then somewhere in between all of that they're like, "No. NO. This can't be it." (We'll get to that part eventually.)
> 
> Anyway. This is my first multi-chapter fic, because there was just *no way* I could fit everything I wanted to in a one-shot, and I don't know, I feel like this'll work better as a continuous story. Knowing me, it'll be ridiculously long but I hope you all read and enjoy it anyway. :D
> 
> \--
> 
> Title comes from "Who Knows" by BEGINNERS.

**ONE.**

Winston introduces all of them.

They're at his induction ceremony. It's been years, but he's  _finally_ a cop, he freakin' did it. His fiancée, Aly, she throws this low-key afterparty at their place and taps the edge of her wine glass before she speaks, says, "I'm proud of him, but I beat him to it." (Because she did, she's a training officer and he's  _just_   _starting out_ , and then -- "I'm also better than him. Kidding! Kind of."). 

Winston holds the small of Jess's back and refills her wine, because he's a gentleman and she isn't even that tipsy yet. "Go mingle!", he says, pointing at the room.

Jess scrunches her nose and looks at Cece who also scrunches her nose, and then she speaks for both of them. "We don't want to date any of those barbarians you call 'friends'," she says. Winston pretends not to know what she's talking about, but God, they've been friends for five, six years, and who  _hasn't_ Winston tried to set Cece and Jess up with.

"Need I remind you of the Comedy Magician you made me go out with last month, or..."

Winston shakes his head. "I didn't know he'd pull the _hat_ out of the _rabbit_ , Jess."

"Well he did! And I'm scarred for life! No more setting me up, Winston."

Winston wiggles his eyebrows, scans the room, listens to Cece tell him how drunk he is, and then he points over to two guys sharing a ledge of his sofa.

"Not even with  _Schmidt_?", Winston asks, and Jess is about to ask what the hell a  _Schmidt_ is when --

"Oh. Mama like. If he's the one in the plaid button-down with a sweater over it, that is."

Winston confirms that that's Schmidt. "I've been saying the two of you would make the cutest couple for  _months_ , but he didn't get the courage to dump his college girlfriend until last week. He's finally on the market again, and you need to go talk to him."

Cece nods. "Maybe it's not a bad idea, Jess. I mean, you  _do_ want to find someone to settle down with, and he looks like total Husband Material."

Jess raises an eyebrow at Cece and goes, "Oh yeah? Why don't  _you_ go and talk to him then?", and Cece just shakes her head.

"No, Cece can't talk to Schmidt, because Cece belongs with my best dude, Nick," says Winston.

"Did you like... map this whole thing out? Super weird, man," Cece says.

Winston claps his hand together and lets out this manic laugh -- (he's drunk, but he's also crazy). "Kind of! You're gonna love, Nick, Cece. He's a bartender and a writer."

"Interesting career combo," she says, scrunching her nose and looking at Jess who nods in approval. 

"Well, okay, I shouldn't call him a  _writer_ , because he hasn't... you know...  _written anything_ , but he is in the middle of a zombie novel called 'Z is For Zombie'. That's as far as he got."

"Zombie novel?", asks Jess with intrigue. "Cool!"

"I know! I'm calling a bestseller on that one," Winston says. "Anyway, he reminds me a lot of the dudes you usually date Ceec, only nicer. Also, he might shower less, but still: he's super nice."

"Grrreat..."

"Look, Winston, I appreciate you wanting Cece and I to find something as good as what you and Aly have, but you can't just push us onto your weirdo best friends."

"For the record," says Winston, taking his wine glass to his mouth and taking a sip, "you two are  _also_ my weirdo best friends."

Cece opens her mouth to argue, but Jess just levels a hand at her and says, "Come on, we  _are_ a little weird, Ceec."

"Fine, I'll go talk to Nick, but I'm not gonna enjoy it."

"Not the right attitude, missy!", yells Winston, and then he snatches the wine glass from her hands.

"Come on, let's go pretend to enjoy mingling with Nick and Schmidt," says Jess, tugging Cece over to the couch.

—

" _You're_ Jess? _The Jess_?" Schmidt's nice, he is. He has this warm smile, and it's better than Spencer's or Paul's or... Okay, let's not revisit Ghosts of Boyfriends Past right now, Jess. He pulls his hand out of the pocket of his khakis and shakes hers. "Winston's been name-dropping you to me for  _months_."

"I got my first mention of you tonight," she says, and she shakes his hand back. "Winston thinks he can just throw me and Cece onto the first two guys he can think of, but then I saw you over by the couch and thought, ' _Whoa, look at that plaid undershirt_ ', and the rest is history. Kidding! Um, am I being weird?"

Schmidt sets his beer down on the coffee table and shakes his head. "You and Cece? Who's -- Who's Cece?"

Jess smacks her lips together and points over at Cece, who's just making her way over to Nick. "Cece!", she shouts. "She's my best friend."

Schmidt gets a long look at Cece, and the corner of his lips curl. Jess almost wants to ask why, but she's also too tipsy to really care. "And she's -- She's single?"

"Well, yeah," Jess says. "We both are, which is why Winston decided to play Cupid at his own party. Stupid Winston."

Schmidt pockets his hands and then he looks over at Jess. "Maybe we can get out of here for a little bit," he suggests, and Jess's eyes go wide, because  _whoa, we just met_. "No, not like that, not for  _sex_. Winston has a deck, and you can't hear the techno music from out there."

Jess sighs in relief and then goes, "Well you should've mentioned the deck before! Yeah, okay, let's go to the deck."

—

Cece watches Jess go out to the deck with Schmidt and she's over here pretending to enjoy small talk with Nick. 

"A zombie novel?", she asks plainly, taking a long swig of her beer. "I mean, zombies are kind of stupid, but... okay."

"Wait, do you -- Are they really stupid?", Nick asks, like her opinion is the be-all, end-all. "You wouldn't read my book?"

She laughs, her tongue between her teeth, and okay, he's not the cutest person she's ever seen and he's kind of dressed like some kind of lumberjack, but he's kind of sweet and he means well, probably. "We'll see," she says teasingly.

"You're super pretty," Nick compliments, and Cece just brushes her bangs away from her forehead and blushes, even though she's used to guys thinking she's pretty, even though she'd rather be 'interesting' or something else that isn't 'pretty' to a guy. Whatever.

"Um." She clears her throat, and then she thinks about Jess out on the deck with that Schmidt guy, and what they could be doing, and why they've been out there for so long. "Is your friend Schmidt -- Is he a good guy?"

"Schmidt?" Nick shrugs a shoulder. "I mean, he's the worst, but only because I live with him. Last week, he woke me up in the middle of the night and asked to sleep in my bed because he had a bad dream. I hate the bastard."

Cece laughs, and then she says, "No, I'm only asking because he's out on the deck with my best friend right now and if he tries having sex with her or -- I don't know, if he does anything stupid, I'll kill him. Jess has been through  _so much_ and she still believes in love more than anyone I know."

Nick looks sad at that, and he sets his beer bottle down on the floor and gulps. "Sounds like me," he says, rubbing his hands together. " _Four years_. Four years and suddenly Caroline doesn't love me anymore. It's stupid, and Schmidt says I need to move on and meet new girls and --"

Cece nods understandingly. Kind of. She's never had a serious relationship before, mostly because they're dumb and feelings are weird and she hates setting herself up to be hurt. 

"I'm sorry," Nick says, catching himself and almost wincing at his own rambling. "Here I am talking to a beautiful girl my friend is trying to set me up with about a crazy girl I dated for four years. Four years. Of my life. I'm so old!"

Cece widens her eyes and throws an arm around his shoulder. "You're also drunk. And hey, it's okay. I'm so bad at shit like this. Winston thinks we'd be good together, but Winston  _also_ ignores what a mess I am."

Nick shakes his head like he doesn't believe her, because pretty people can't be messes or something, but then he lets out this breath and looks at her and says, "Hey, I'm even more of a mess than you. Do you know that, up until three weeks ago, I didn't even own a smartphone? Schmidt made me upgrade."

Cece laughs at him for that, and then they slide into a corner in Winston's living room and stay pressed up against the wall talking for an hour.

—

Everyone leaves Winston's party at around one in the morning, and Schmidt offers to drive Jess home.

"It's okay," she says, waving him off with a hand. "Cece'll kill me if I make her take a taxi by herself. It was nice talking to you, Schmidt."

He nods. "You too, Jess. Hey, you  _really_ like crafting, don't you?"

"I was  _just_ getting started," she says. "Next time we hangout, I'll tell you all about that time I took up scrapbooking."

"Looking forward to it," he says, and then he tells her to go find her friend and get home safe and all of that.

Jess hugs Schmidt goodnight, and then she races over to Winston's front yard and finds Cece and grabs her by the backs of her arms, spinning her around.

"Ceec!", she yells, and Cece turns around and faces Jess and rubs her lips together. "I was with Schmidt all night," she says, and she sounds proud, because she hasn't been with a guy  _all night_ since Spencer.

"And...?", Cece presses on, waiting for more.

"I trust Winston's matchmaking skills, I do, but -- Okay, you know that  _spark_ I said I wanted to feel?"

"I KNOW!", Cece yells, and Jess knows she's drunk as shit, but she hasn't even finished the story.

"Cece, I didn't feel that when I talked to Schmidt," Jess confesses, and then she says, "No! Okay, no, he's  _so nice_ , and even though he's a definite Republican he wasn't a douche about it, and I think he's really cute, but..."

"Jess, maybe we're not supposed to feel that spark. The spark," Cece says, holding onto Jess's arm as their cab pulls up, "is dumb."

"What about Nick?", Jess asks when they climb in, letting Cece slide in first.

Cece sits down and buckles herself in, and then she shakes her head. "He's been hurt. A lot. And he did not. stop. talking. about. it. I think he was so drunk he thought I was like, a therapist."

"Aww. Ceec, maybe he needs someone like you to ground him," Jess says, and Cece insistently shakes her head 'no'. "What? You're telling me you never want to settle down? You never want to be committed to anybody?"

"Nick is like you, Jess. He has a hard time moving on, and he loves love and all of that lame shit."

"Ha." Jess elbows Cece in the side. "Imagine if Winston set us up with the wrong people. Imagine that."

Cece rolls her eyes and lays her head down against the window, groaning at that. (And how hungover she's going to be in a few hours.)

"Look, Winston knows what he's doing. I mean, look how in-love he is! Aly is great. We should just trust him, you know? Not overthink it. And this is coming from me. The Queen Of Overthinking." Jess leans over the seat and smooches Cece on the cheek. "Maybe Nick and Schmidt are what we need."

—

Cece decides to give Nick another chance, mostly because Jess spent all this morning at hangover brunch convincing her to.

("Do you want to be stubborn, or do you want to be happy?"

"Who  _cares_ if he likes writing about zombies?! In the fifth grade, you wrote a very erotic love story for English class, and no one judged you!"

"Wear your good underwear and march over there and make it happen, Cecelia. You deserve this!")

So she does. First she texts Nick and asks him if he's free, and he is, and then he tells her to come over. She agrees too, and when she's on her way he sends her a text that reads:  **u like nachos?** , and she rolls her eyes. Thanks, Jess, thanks a lot.

Cece knocks twice on the door, and then it opens up, only Nick doesn't answer.

It's Schmidt, Jess's dude, the dude Cece isn't pestering Jess to call up and hangout and eat nachos with because Cece lets the universe do its thing and Cece doesn't chase anybody.

He's really cute up close.

"Cecelia. Um. Cece," she says, introducing herself, because she realizes this guy probably has no idea who the hell she is. "I saw you at the party last night. You were hanging out with my friend Jess."

"Jess? Oh! Jess! She's so much fun. Do you know she tap danced for me out on the deck?"

Cece lets out this laugh and goes, "I didn't, but I'm not the least bit surprised."

Schmidt looks at her without saying anything for a second, and if he weren't Jess's dude, she'd call him out for checking her out. She doesn't, though, she just smiles at him and asks, "Is -- Is Nick home?"

"You... You're...  _Nick_? You're seeing Nick?"

Cece shoves her hands in the pocket of her leather jacket and ignores how red her cheeks get. "Not  _seeing_ ," she says. "Um, we just talked at that party last night, and Winston tried setting us up, and -- Is he here?"

Schmidt nods. "Well, yeah. He's in his room, probably spraying Axe on parts Axe should not typically be sprayed on."

Cece laughs at that, and then when neither of them say anything, she checks Schmidt out right back. Good catch, Jess, thanks for leaving me with freakin'  _Nick_.

"Can I just..." He pauses mid-sentence, and Cece rubs her lips together when he does. He inches into her a little bit closer. "Nicholas is super messed up, you know."

"Oh. I know. He cried on my shoulder about some chick named Caroline for like... forty minutes at the party last night."

"He played The Caroline Card? Well great! Glad to know that still works."

Cece shakes her head. "It didn't. I got kind of creeped out, but Jess believes in giving people chances and true love and all of that, so that's why I'm standing in your doorway right now."

Schmidt looks at her and starts to laugh. "True love. Ha. I don't believe in 'true love'. You just... You know, you just  _love someone_ , and you thank the universe they love you back. Even someone as terrible as me knows that."

Cece goes, "Right?!", and then a second later, she asks, "Wait, but why are you terrible?"

"I've had one serious relationship in my entire life, and I ruined it because I'm shallow."

"Yeah? Well I've had zero," Cece says, and then Schmidt says, "Trying to one up me, Cecelia?"

She narrows her eyes at him and laughs. "No, I'm just saying that I suck too."

Just then, Nick comes out of his bedroom and pops his head up behind Schmidt. "Stealing my girl?", he jokes, and Schmidt clears his throat and backs away from the door. 

"I stole your girl  _one time_ , Nicholas, and _she_ came onto _me_!"

"I'll never forgive you for The Lucy Incident of 2015, Schmidt."

Schmidt rolls his eyes and nods over at Cece. "Cece. Nice talking to you. Good luck with this one."

Cece bites down on her lip and smiles over at Nick first, and then she looks behind him to Schmidt.

Something inside of her tells her that Winston made a mistake, that Nick can't be the one she'd be good with because the way Schmidt's smiling at her right now is...

No. He's Jess's guy. 

—

She hangs out with Nick for three hours, and it's okay, it is.

They drink beer on his bed and listen to old 80's music and two-and-a-half hours in, they make out a little to one of Nick's old vinyls.

It's not great, but it's not bad, and maybe he isn't like, Soulmate Material or anything, but Cece has low expectations and bad luck with men.

—

Jess's date with Schmidt is... Okay, this isn't the first time she's cried in the bathroom on a date, but it still sucks, and it isn't his fault.

"Winston?" She's cooped up in one of the stalls, simultaneously sliding off her tights while holding the phone to her ear. "Yes, I'm peeing, but I'm also crying."

"Why, Jess?", he asks, and he sounds busy, and she hates bothering him with this shit, but Cece is at work and all of her other friends are in love and happy and they don't want to hear about her dating shenanigans.

"I think you set me up with the wrong guy," she says, crying into the phone.

"Wait, are you on a date with Schmidt  _right now_?", he questions.

"Um. Well. Yes. I'm hiding in the bathroom."

"Well hang up the damn phone and go back out there, Jess!"

"He thinks I'm crazy, Winston! I sang a song from  _Wicked_ at him when the food came."

"One of the greatest musicals of our gener -- Wait. Why? No singing on first dates, we talked about this!"

Jess sniffles and sighs. "He sleeps around. A lot. And he doesn't like commitments, and he thinks  _Hair_  is the best Broadway musical of all-time, and he sleeps with models. Models! Do I look like a model to you, Winston?"

Winston sighs into the phone. "For a Japanese toy store's catalogue, maybe..."

She cries even harder. "Are you sure you know what you're doing, Winston?"

" _Do I know what I'm doing_. Psh. Jessica."

"Saying 'Psh. Jessica.' doesn't exactly help me, Winston."

"Just... give it a shot, Jess. Don't run away because he doesn't seem to have what you're looking for." Jess tries to find a reason to argue back, but he's right. "When Aly and I first met, we didn't get along at all. She told me I had 'snail eyes' and I told her she had a weird-shaped neck. Now? I love her damn neck!"

—

Jess gets home a little after midnight, and Cece is on the couch watching some HGTV show.

"Hey," she says, and she toes off her flats and throws her purse on the living room floor. 

"How'd it go?", Cece asks, and she's actually super curious about it, because Schmidt's involved and... Okay, no, you're not allowed to think about  _Schmidt_ because you made out with Nick Miller to an OMC song yesterday. 

"Um. I cried in the bathroom."

"What?"! She widens her eyes and races over to Jess and hugs her, because hugs work wonders on Jessica Day. "Babe, what did he do, I'll kill him."

"No, he's just... Schmidt's nice, but he doesn't feel like  _my type_ , you know."

"You don't have a type, Jess," says Cece.

"I do! Guys who think someone famous stole their idea, mostly, but..."

Cece smiles and hugs Jess even harder, putting those ridiculous Schmidt feelings at the very back of her mind, because she's crazy for even thinking about it.

"Maybe it takes time to really fall in love, you know?"

Jess shakes her head. "Not for me. I usually just... jump in. No, I don't even jump, I do an olympic-style  _dive_. And then I get hurt."

"Exactly. Maybe this time, you won't get hurt, and the feelings will just... come."

Jess nods against Cece's hold. "I hope you're right."

—

Jess goes to Schmidt's place the next day, mostly to apologize for crying in the bathroom at dinner and singing  _Wicked_ songs at him.

Nick opens the door before she can even lift her arm up to knock. "Oh. Wow. Okay, good timing, am I right? Is the package for me or Schmidt? If it's for Schmidt, just leave it with me anyway, I'm super good at forging his signature."

"Not a delivery guy. Girl. I'm Jessica Day."

Schmidt's girl.  _Oh_. He holds a hand out to her and makes a mental note to tell Schmidt how hard he just scored. The girl is  _something else_. (Nick's secretly into skirts, and polka dots, and girls who wear bows in their hair. Whatever.)

"Nick," he says. "Nicholas for long."

"Well, Nicholas For Long, it's super nice to formally meet you, but is Schmidt here?"

He shakes his head. "He just left for work, actually. Did you text him before?"

Jess wrinkles her nose. "I'm not into that whole 'texting before I arrive' thing. I kind of just... show up."

"I feel that, I do. Smartphones are dumb, and they invented doorbells for a reason."

"Right?!" She laughs, and then she lifts up the bag she's holding into Nick's view. "I baked him cookies, because that's kind of how I apologize for things."

Nick narrows his eyes at her. "Sugar cookies?"

"Duh."

"Smart girl."

"Just... Just make sure he gets these, and tell him if he wants a second date, I'm game. And I  _won't_ sing at him this time."

Nick salutes her jokingly and takes the cookies from her, commenting on how cutely they're wrapped in pink-colored plastic wrap.

"See ya, Jessica," he says before he closes the door.

"See ya, Nicholas For Long."


	2. TWO.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This got a liiittle long, but nonetheless, I hope you enjoy it!!

**TWO.**

Being thirty and seeing everyone else who is also thirty but all coupled-up sucks. (So does getting invites to their weddings, and their baby showers, and their kid's fifth birthday parties.)  
  
Jess and Schmidt are sitting on his couch when she asks him, "So are you looking for anything serious?"  
  
He wrinkles his nose and tilts his head, and God, Jess, you haven't even _kissed_ yet, relax. After a few seconds, he shrugs at her and goes, "Depends how serious we're talking. I once bought a cat with my ex-girlfriend. Such an impulse buy, but it legitimately startled me."  
  
"Oh, no, are you afraid of cats?!", Jess asks, frowning. "I'm such a cat person!"  
  
"I like cats and cats love me -- and my nipples, which is a great story, remind me to tell it sometime." Jess winces at that, but Schmidt just laughs it off, because apparently unlike Jess, he doesn't care about embarrassing himself. "It's just... I get scared when things get serious because, I don't know, why is everyone in such a _rush_ , you know?"  
  
Jess widens her eyes.  
  
"Like, what's so bad about being thirty and unmarried? I personally love it. I never get a tan line from my non-existent wedding band. Wedding band tan lines are terrible."  
  
Jess rubs her lips together and says, "The worst, but _still_. Marriage is so beautiful! You don't want that?"  
  
"Someday, but I don't think about it."  
  
Jess scoffs. "You sound _just_ like my best friend Cece. My kids will be having their own kids before she gets married. She says she 'doesn't care', but I don't believe her."  
  
Cece. Schmidt thinks about their little encounter in his doorway the other day, the encounter that was literally nothing, the encounter that Cece probably never even mentioned to Jess because it was _literally nothing_.  
  
Schmidt clears his throat. "Speaking of Cece...", he starts, and Jess sits up. "How -- How are she and Nicholas doing?"  
  
"Don't you two live together?", Jess questions in confusion.  
  
"Well, yeah, but he stopped telling me about his personal life after I read his diary in sophomore year of college," Schmidt says.  
  
"He had a diary in college too?!", Jess asks in shock, and she makes a mental note to go home and see if she can find hers in that box of junk underneath her bed.  
  
"What a lose -- Oh. Wait. You -- How nice! I'm sure your diary was much better than his. Every other page of Nick's was just some gross, erotic drawing of princesses. He's pretty talented, though, I _will_ give him that."  
  
Jess folds her hands in her lap and clears her throat, and she stops thinking about that damn diary and starts thinking about how Schmidt wants _nothing_ close to what she wants; how Winston might actually suck at matchmaking and how she should just call up Spencer and say, "Hey, I know you cheated on me, but I know you also know I'm the most forgiving person on the planet. Let's move back in together and pretend we work."  
  
Schmidt reaches over to the coffee table and grabs Jess's empty wine glass off of the coaster he made her put it on. "Refill?", he asks, and she just nods.  
  
"Wait! No. I -- I've had enough."  
  
"Wine? Okay, that's cool, cool-io, more for Schmidty, more for Schmidty."  
  
"Of -- Of this," she says, and then she stands up and smooths her hands down her dress, stopping on her thighs and groaning. "I'm sorry! You're so nice to talk to, and you're handsome. I mean, you have Joint Bank Account Eyes, and I really like it when you wear cardigans even though I'm sure all of your friends taunt you about it, but I don't -- I don't think you want what I want, Schmidt."  
  
He stands up too, setting down Jess's wine glass and playing with the ends of his cardigan. "What is it that you want, exactly?"  
  
"I mean, I'd like to fall in love, eventually."  
  
He looks offended (or confused?) for a second, and then he says, "Who's to say you won't? We _just_  met."  
  
"I knowww," she says, balling her hands into fist. "I'm being stupid. I'm expecting a _spark_ , and there's -- Okay, it's really nice hanging out with you, but there's no spark. Cece says ' _The Spark_ ' isn't real, but I'm determined to prove her wrong."  
  
"Oh goodness." He's laughing at her now. "You sound like Nicholas. Last week at dinner, Winston's fiancée asked him what he was looking for in a girl and he said, 'magic'. I was expecting 'boobs', but he said _'magic'_."  
  
Jess huffs and her bangs fly off of her forehead for a second. "Magic is a real thing, Schmidt."  
  
"Chemistry, maybe, but not _magic_. We have chemistry."  
  
"Well, yeah, but we don't have --"  
  
"Don't say --"  
  
"Magic."  
  
"Damn it."  
  
"I'm sorry, that's just who I am Schmidt, I _had_  to say it."  
  
"I understand," Schmidt says, and then he offers to walk her out.  
  
—  
  
Nick's idea of a date is taking Cece to this rundown bar downtown, and Cece's last actual date was at this takeout Chinese food place with a guy who might've been an arms dealer, so... This beats  _that_.  
  
"This is nice, huh?", Nick asks her, and he's bobbing his head to whatever sad, sorry song is coming from the jukebox.  
  
"Sure," Cece says with a smile, and then she drinks from the beer Nick ordered for her.  
  
"Have you ever been dumped?", he asks out-of-the-blue, and Cece just glares at him. "Sorry, let me say it more politely: Umm... Have you ever been dumped?"  
  
She rolls her eyes, and all Nick says is, "I'm sorry, there's just no nice way to ask that!"  
  
She clears her throat and sets down her beer on the countertop, folding her hands in her lap. "Once."  
  
"Lucky."  
  
"No! I cried for three days straight and then went out and got a bad haircut as if that was supposed to make me feel better. Jess's idea, not mine."  
  
"Jess sounds smart. I got so drunk and sad after my breakup with Caroline that I'd just go down to the park and throw birdseed at people."  
  
"Why didn't you just make yourself useful and... I don't know... _feed the birds_?"  
  
"I was drunk and sad. Four years, Cece! That's a preschooler."  
  
Cece reaches her hand over and squeezes his knee, and it's the first time all night they touch. "One day, you're gonna get over Caroline, but I don't think that day is going to be anytime soon."  
  
"What -- I -- Why would you say that? I'm so over it. I stored her in my phone as 'That Girl'. That's being 'over it'."  
  
"That's being obsessed," Cece corrects him. "Her number should've been deleted from your phone months ago."  
  
"Fair point," he says, and then he tips his beer bottle at her. "Anyone ever tell you how smart you are?"  
  
"Ye... No. It's mostly, 'Cece, hey, you're hot!', but..."  
  
" _But_ you're smart," Nick says after a second. He digs into his pocket for a ten dollar bill and throws it down onto the counter. "Look, I don't think we should get into anything serious until I'm... you know... not as fucked up as I am."  
  
Cece agrees, but mostly because she's on Nick's level, probably. "I think you need a lot more time to get over Caroline."  
  
"Winston thought introducing me to you would help, and okay, it is a little bit. I mean, I haven't been out to a bar with a beautiful girl in _forever_ , not one who stayed and talked to me for more than..." He pauses and lifts up his left arm, pretending to read the watch he isn't wearing. "How long have we been here?"  
  
"About an hour," she says, biting down on her lip.  
  
"What?!", Nick shouts, widening his eyes. "You've dealt with me for an entire hour?!"  
  
"Well, yeah, all of my friends were busy tonight, so."  
  
"Hey!"  
  
"Look, I'm having fun, I'm kind of tipsy, and I kind of want to go back to your place." She whispers when she says that last part to him.  
  
Nick is caught off guard, so he raises an eyebrow at her and goes, "Really?"  
  
"I mean, that's what I just said."

"I'm ordering us a round of shots, and then we're  _doing this thing_."

Cece cheers and slaps her hand down onto the bar counter. "Damn right we are!"  
  
—  
  
It's been awhile since Cece's done any of this. The last was Kyle. They "dated" (Jess calls it "fating" -- fake dating, because ' _You're not in love, and he doesn't even buy you gifts for the holidays!_ ') for a few months, but he broke it off because he started sleeping with another model Cece knows from around the agency, and now they're all into each other and Cece's Yesterday's News, or whatever.  
  
Basically, Cece and Nick are kissing before they get into the door of the apartment.  
  
It's not passionate, not even a bit. If Cece had to describe kissing Nick Miller in one word, it would be: Convenient. He's there, and she's there, and they're doing _this_.  
  
He sloppily reaches into the pocket of his jeans for the key, and he stops kissing her to yell, "SCHMIDTY! I FORGOT MY KEY AGAIN, MAN!"  
  
Schmidt, mumbling curse words Cece and Nick are both too drunk to understand under his breath, opens the door. He's wearing this little blue robe with Japanese-style printed flowers on it, and Cece can almost see his entire manhood. She tries her best not to laugh at him, and she also tries her best not to check him out in that thing.  
  
Schmidt catches sight of what's going on -- Nick is trying desperately to get a beautiful girl into his bedroom, but he's also terrible at multitasking, and he can barely kiss anyone properly while standing up.  
  
"Nicholas, it's past your bedtime. And mine. Can't you do this when I _don't_  have to be up at six A.M. for a meeting on budget reports?"  
  
Nick stumbles past Schmidt, a hand around Cece's waist. "Shouldn't you be out with your girl doing the same thing?", he asks.  
  
"Jess is a teacher. Of students. She's a responsible adult who goes to bed at a responsible hour. Aaanddd... we're also not seeing each other anymore."  
  
Cece lets go off Nick and turns to face Schmidt. "WHAT?!", she asks, and then her eyes get crazy and she gets in his face and Schmidt takes three steps back. "If it's because you hurt her, I will use that itty bitty excuse for a robe you're wearing right now and choke you with it."  
  
"My  _kimono_ ," he starts, "did nothing to you."  
  
Cece's clearly not having it, and Nick is standing behind she and Schmidt dumbfounded.  
  
"And I did nothing to Jess. We're just not as compatible as we thought. She told me to call her when I figure out what I want, and knowing me, that could take awhile. I don't want to hurt her, you know? She's sweet, and she offered me cupcakes for this bake sale she's having at her school tomorrow even though she was down a whole batch. They're in the kitchen if you want some."  
  
"Ooh! Cupcakes!", Nick says, and suddenly he's drunk and distracted and digging into a dozen vanilla-iced cupcakes in his and Schmidt's kitchen.  
  
Schmidt waits until Nick is halfway through his first cupcake before grabbing Cece by the wrist and dragging her over to his couch. "You," he says in a stern voice. "Come with me."  
  
" _Me_ ," Cece repeats, and then she laughs and lets her body plop down onto the couch. "God. You don't notice how drunk you are until you sit back down again. Whoo."  
  
"Look, Cece, I know you don't really know me, but I'm not out to ruin your friend's life, okay? I just..." He pauses to sigh, running his fingers through his hair. "Don't tell Jess, I'll tell her, but I don't think I see her in my future. Not like... you know... not like that."  
  
Cece's drunk as all hell, but she knows what he means. "I won't," she says, suddenly serious, and she holds out her pinky finger to Schmidt.  
  
"We doin' this?", he asks with a laugh, but he holds his pinky finger out to Cece's without an issue and locks them together.  
  
Cece pulls her finger off of Schmidt's and then leans back into his couch. For a second, she says nothing, and then she starts dry heaving.  
  
"Not on the leather!", Schmidt says, horrified. "Can I help get you to the bathroom? Can you even get to the bathroom without getting sick?"  
  
Throwing up grosses him out. He took care of Nick when Nick got the stomach bug in 2003 and from there, it all went downhill. ('Downhill' meaning: That pair of Calvin Klein dress pants he so very loved were stained by Nicholas Miller's vomit, and he'll never miss another piece of clothing more.)  
  
Cece tries to stand up from the couch, fumbling. "I'll try not," she says, panting, "to puke," another pant, "on your precious, precious leather."  
  
Schmidt mouths a 'Thank you' at her and then loops an arm around her waist, taking her into the bathroom.  
  
"Schmidty? Is that you throwing up, my man? I told you that tofu bullshit you eat is going to kill you, dude!"  
  
—  
  
"Nick, dude, hear me out."  
  
Nick presses the phone to his ear all while digging into his third cupcake. (Note to Nick: Thank chick who made said third cupcake. And first and second and the nine more sitting in front of me. So good.)  
  
"You haven't even said anything, man."  
  
Winston's freaking out on the other end of the phone, just kind of wailing and flailing and panting. He kind of sounds like a dehydrated dog.  
  
"Did Aly leave you? That son of a bitch. Want me to tell her off? I've been preparing my "Tell Aly Nelson Off Speech" for years."  
  
"Because of that one time she told you that you looked like "The ugly, brunette version of Owen Wilson"? Just get over it, man!"  
  
Nick pouts into the phone as if Winston can see him. "It was hurtful and it was uncalled for."  
  
"Dude, I screwed up. Did Schmidt tell you what happened between him and Jess?"  
  
"Not compatible. Gave him cupcakes anyway. They're so fucking good, Winston. I ate three."  
  
"Nick, put down the damn cupcake and stop chomping in my ear!", Winston yells. "No, I mean, I think I screwed up with the matchmaking."  
  
"The matchmaking?", Nick asks, almost clueless.  
  
"How are things going with Cece?"  
  
"Cece. The girl? Hmm. Oh! With Cece. They're fine. I took her on a romantic date to the bar and then we made out for a few minutes and now she's in the bathroom throwing up."  
  
Winston sighs into the phone. "You're that bad of a kisser, huh Miller? So your college girlfriend Amelia was right about you."  
  
Nick gets defensive and yells, "AMELIA KISSES LIKE A WET DOG DIGGING FOR A MILKBONE THAT GOT LOST IN THE COUCH! And no, she's throwing up because she's drunk, you asshole."  
  
"And you... left her there to go eat cupcakes?"  
  
"No, man, I didn't _leave her there_. You're an idiot. She's fine, she's with Schmidt."  
  
Winston laughs and repeats, "With Schmidt."  
  
"With Schmidt, yeah, that's what I just said."  
  
"Oh God, what did I _do_?"  
  
"Interrupted me while I was eating a good ass cupcake, actually. Goodnight, Winston, you stupid bastard."  
  
—

Schmidt holds Cece's hair back and lets her puke into their urinal, and she stops mid-puke and turns around to him and goes, "Why do you even have a urinal? Do you guys miss  _that_ much?"

Schmidt wrinkles his nose. "Nick does."

"Ugh." She groans and swivels her body around to face his, and she's too drunk to even be grossed out about the fact that she's sitting on two dudes'  bathroom floor. "I'm sorry you had to watch me throw up. You look kind of sick yourself."

He's dry-heaving. "I... It's so gross."

"Then why did you follow me in here?!"

He's kind of laughing now, but he also looks horrified. "You... I think there's puke in your hair."

He's pointing at a strand of hair stuck to Cece's shoulder, and she just shrugs all nonchalantly and pushes it out of her face, using the ponytail holder on her wrist to throw it all up into this sloppy bun. "Worse things have been in my hair, so."

Schmidt wrinkles his nose in disgust. "Do I want to know?"

Cece just shakes her head, and then she swipes at her mouth and looks at Schmidt. He's so cute, even in that  _ridiculous_ robe -- ahem, kimono. He's still here, even though she just threw up the entire contents of her stomach (and then some), and even though he spent the entire seventeen minutes Cece spent puking crying and cringing, he never let go of her hair.

"Can I ask you something?", she says, inching in closer to him. She's still a little drunk, and Schmidt's still a little grossed out. He backs away a bit, scooting his butt back on the tile. "Sorry. I smell like straight up puke."

"And tequila," he adds. "Sorry. Ask away."

"Is it mean of me to be pissed at Winston for setting me up with Nick?"

Schmidt doesn't know what to say back, and internally he's kind of freaking out, because even though he doesn't really know Cece, he really  _wants_ to know Cece. She's beautiful, despite puking her guts out in his bathroom while he watched, and something about being around her calms him down and makes him forget about all of that bullshit he spews about not wanting anyone to settle down with. He thought about it for a total of three seconds the day they talked at the door, and it could work, but he hasn't said anything about it to her or to anyone.

He gulps and takes his hands down to tighten the tie on his kimono. "You're literally Female Nick, so no, it's not."

"I know I am! It's like looking in a mirror. Do I drink beer as sloppily as he does? Do I say 'Ack!' when things don't go my way?"

"Some of Nicholas's finest traits. I might fall in love with you if you really  _are_ Female Nick, you know. He's my best friend in the entire world even if he hates me for making sure he eats a proper breakfast every morning."

Cece wrinkles her nose and almost forgets about how sick she feels for a second, and if she were Sober and Not Here With Nick Miller, she'd lean over and kiss him, but things don't usually go her way when she tries to make them go her way.

"I'm sorry I yelled at you before," she says after Schmidt doesn't say anything else. "Jess needs honesty, and you were honest with her."

"Jess is  _so cool_ ," he says, and Cece just laughs and says, "Duh."

"So are you, though, Cece, and for -- for someone I've only talked to a handful of times in my life, I keep thinking about you. It's so stupid."

Cece doesn't tell him that she's in the same boat, that she feels all of this sappy shit when she looks at him, that Nick can smile at her ten times and it makes her feel absolutely nothing but when Schmidt does it once it's just...

"Winston's been wrong before, you know," she says lowly.

"Yeah, I know, he's  _Winston_. Dude's a whimsical idiot!"

"But he  _is_ really in love, and he's so good at just... I mean, he set up my friends Sadie and Melissa, and look at them. Sadie's pregnant with their second and they  _still_ find time to have sex and enjoy it."

"I don't know Sadie and Melissa, but that's only because their relationship involves two sets of boobs," Schmidt says pointedly, leveling a hand at Cece. "I'm sorry for telling you I thought all of those things about you, but maybe you're what Nick needs, so I'll -- I'll back off."

"You haven't backed  _on_ ," she says, and then she shakes her head and apologizes for how wrong that sounded. She stands up and fixes her hair a bit in the mirror by the sink, and then she turns to face him and the corner of her lips curl when he smiles at her. "Thank you for helping me out tonight, Schmidt. I owe you."

—

Jess makes Cece the best batch of her famous Hangover Eggs the next morning, and then she bugs her about the date with Nick.

"Did he kiss you goodnight?!", she asks with intrigue, sliding the plate with extra bacon over to Cece, who eagerly takes a slice. 

"I had throw up all over my mouth," Cece says, waving a hand at Jess. "He just gave me a hug and told me to call him."

(That's a lie. Nick drunkenly passed out on the couch with a cupcake wrapper in his hand before Cece even got out of his bathroom. Schmidt helped her downstairs and called a cab for her.)

"Sooo...", Jess presses on. "Is it going somewhere?"

"Stop! Jess, you know I hate talking about this stuff. Partly because I'm hungover as  _shit_ , but also because I'll end up jinxing it."

"Oh. Oh!" Jess's eyes are all wide, and she drops her fork onto her plate. "Is there something to jinx, Cecelia?"

Cece turns red in the face, and she's not even thinking about Nick. (She's the worst.) "Um, maybe," she says.

"Good, because he's  _cuuute_. And I bet he's a good kisser."

"What?" Cece's laughing. "Jess, are you sure you wouldn't like to see for yourself?"

"No! Cece, what, no! I just think he's cute and he looks like someone who knows how to handle a mouth-to-mouth sitch."

"Is 'sitch' short for situation?", asks Cece, and Jess nods proudly. "Stop doing that, Jess, it's just three more syllables. It'll take you an extra second."

"Cece, all I care about is that you're happy, okay? You don't have to give me details, and you don't have to tell me whether or not he's a good kisser -- although, I'm willing to bet money he is."

"Jess, I just... I don't want to sound like I'm bragging. I know you and Schmidt kind of broke things off yesterday, so..."

"Oh!  _Oh_!" Jess starts to laugh, her head titled back, and then she stands up and clears her plate and turns around to face Cece. "Ceec, it's fine, I'm  _fine_. Schmidt's a good guy, and I'd rather him hurt me a little bit now than hurt me  _a ton_ later. That's what most guys do."

Cece doesn't believe her, but she bites into another slice of bacon anyway and stays quiet.

"Wait. How do you know we broke things off? I haven't seen you since yesterday morning before I left for work."

"That's -- Just -- Schmidt told me."

"Wait. You hung out with Schmidt and Nick?"

"Kind of," Cece says, and it isn't exactly a lie. "He mentioned you in passing when I went back to Nick's. Said you were cool. That's all."

"Oh." Jess blushes, and then she walks back over to the table to clear Cece's plate. "I'm not sad about it, Ceec. Winston failed. It had to happen sometime, right?"

Cece's a dick, because she's excited inside that Jess isn't sad about Schmidt because she thinks about Schmidt and how he's  _single_ and  _not Jess's_. No. Best friends don't do that stuff anyway, even if Jess gives her the OK.

(In sixth grade, Jess liked Eduardo. Eduardo didn't like her back, because he liked Cece, and Cece didn't know how to tell Jess, so she never did. One day, Eduardo gave Cece this huge Valentine in front of the whole class and Jess cried behind the bleachers. Ever since then, Cece just steers clear from any man Jess even remotely  _thinks about_.)

"Right," Cece says through gritted teeth. "It'll happen for you soon, babe, I promise."

—

Jess is forgiving. And nice. (And personable, and great at reading people, and she knows Microsoft Word and Microsoft Excel and all of the other important Microsofts. -- Jessica Day, Resume, 2012).

She goes to Schmidt's loft without texting or calling, which is maybe her mistake when his roommate opens the door.

"Schmidt's not here?", she asks, and Nick just rubs his lips together and looks around the loft before going, "Nope."

"Damn it. I just wanted to drop by and surprise him. I know breakups are hard, but we literally got to hugging.  _Hugging_. Is that even a base?"

"If we're talking about  _those terms_ ," Nick says, "hugging is the fat kid who gets benched for the entire game."

"Ha. Thought so. Can I come in anyway? I brought cupcakes." Jess lifts the tray off of the ground by her feet and into Nick's view.

" _You're_ Cupcake Lady?! Jess, I think I orgasmed over those cupcakes the other night. Schmidt gave them to me when he was helping Cece puke."

"Schmidt helped Cece -- Never mind. Um, yeah, I made those cupcakes."

"They changed my life," he jokes. Or not. Jess can't tell how serious the dude is, but he looks like he's being  _for real_. "Come in, come in."

Jess steps inside and she's kind of relieved Schmidt's not here, for whatever reason. The air is different around Nick. Like, 'she's not afraid to make a stupid joke that might make her sound ridiculous right now' different.

She opens up the lid of her cupcake tray and hands one to Nick. "I saw you eyeing them funny," she says.

"How do you know I just wasn't checking you out?", he teases, and Jess snickers at him. "Sorry, I know, I'm seeing your best friend, I was just -- I was trying to cheer you up."

"Cheer me up?", she asks, and he whispers, " _Schmidt_."

"Oh, that wasn't anything serious. I once dated someone for six years.  _Six years_. That's a big chunk of my life."

"One-fifth," Nick says, and Jess rolls her eyes. "Sorry. But I know the feeling. Caroline left me with no explanation -- and no hoodies, seriously, she stole them all."

"I'm sorry, Nick," she says, and she watches him take a seat on the couch before she takes one next to him. "You deserve an explanation. And your hoodies."

Nick bites into one of her cupcakes and simultaneously tries to say, "Thank you", but it comes out all mumbled and jumbled because his mouth is stuffed with vanilla frosting. "You're nice, is what I'm trying to say," he says once he swallows, and Jess pats his knee and says it's her pleasure.

—

Cece and Jess hangout at Winston's every Saturday night, just them and Winston and Aly drinking pink wine and playing board games and leaving by 10:30 P.M. because Aly and Winston are basically an old married couple who need to be in bed together by eleven to get ready for  _Saturday Night Live_ and no sex and whatever else people who are all settled down do.

Cece pulls Winston aside after Jess kicks everyone's ass in Scrabble. 

"If this is you yelling at me about the lasagna, I'm sorry. It's Aly's new recipe, and it  _sucks_."

"It was actually delightful," Cece says with a snicker, "but I'll be sure to give that lovely message to your future wife because I hate you."

"You hate me? What I do?! I tried to find you love, damnit, and from what Nick's been telling me, you guys are having fun."

"We start to make out and I stop him because I start thinking about his best friend," Cece says in one breath, and Winston just drops his jaw. "Look, I don't know what it is, but -- Wait, no, it's your terrible People Skills. You can't read people for shit! Nick and I don't work, Winston, okay?"

"That's because you're not giving him a proper try. Quit drooling over Schmidt and start focusing on the dude you actually have."

Cece smacks him on the arm. "I don't  _have_ anyone, Winston. I'm no closer to being in an actual relationship than I was before you introduced me to Nick."

"Give. Him. A. Proper. Try."

"Set. Me. Up. With. Someone. Else."

"Stop. Smacking. Me. On. The. Arm."

Just then, Aly walks into the bathroom and widens her eyes. "Do I want to know what kind of shenanigans are going on in here right now?"

"Cece's bitching about my matchmaking," Winston says, and Aly rolls her eyes and says, "Weeelll..."

"'Weeelll' nothing, Aly. Nick and Cece would make a perfect couple and she's too busy fawning over  _Schmidt_ to see that."

"Wait." Aly holds up a hand and looks between Cece and Winston a few times each, and then she says, "Wait" again. "Winston, honey, I love you, but what is  _wrong_ with you?"

"Um. I have a trick foot, but nothing else that I can think of right n --"

"Do you even know your friends?"

"I know tons of trivial facts about each and every one of them, damnit! Try me. Jess's middle name is Christopher because her dad wanted a boy, Nick peed on an electrical socket when he was a kid because he thought it'd make lightening, Cece lied on her driver's license -- ain't no  _way_ you're 5'9", girl!, and Schmidt  _thinks_ we don't know his first name, but we all know it's --"

"Winston! Schmidt and Cece would be perfect together," says Aly, and Cece levels a hand at him. "They think commitment is a drag, but that's also because neither one of them has ever been in love before."

"That's a silly reason, Aly."

"It's a good one, Winston, and it's also why you  _suck_ at matchmaking."

"Look, Schmidt and Cece can't be together, okay, because then -- Then who would Nick and Jess be with?"

It takes Aly and Cece a minute, but then Cece looks at Winston and smacks him on the arm again and goes, "Um... I don't know... each other?"

"Pfft. Nick and Jess.  _Nick and Jess_. Nick and -- Oh my God. Dude. Nick and Jess would be  _perfect together_!"

"So FIX THIS, you idiot, because I refuse to attend a freakin' Cece-Nick Wedding," Aly says, and then she storms out of the bathroom.

"Nick and Jess." Winston rubs his chin. "Hmm. Why didn't I think of that before?"


	3. THREE.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope this chapter gives you a little Goosebumps Walkaway, but if not, I hope you still enjoy it nonetheless.

**THREE.**

Double dates are for high schoolers, or two bros in college desperately trying to get laid, or... Okay, they're not for two sets of best friends who are barely compatible, who Winston set up with one another on a whim because they had nobody else.  
  
Schmidt picks up Jess because he's trying to be better at this stuff, and even though they've agreed not to see each other until they were ready to, he asks her on this date anyway and she agrees.  
  
When he gets to the apartment, she freaks out and jumps out of the tights she's struggling to get over her legs. "Cece! The door!"  
  
"It's _your_ date!", Cece shoots back, and she's in her room getting ready too. She asked if shorts were appropriate, and Jess gave her that _look_ , and then she asked again, and Jess said, "Cece, you guys can't keep hanging out at bars. This place is fancy. 'Two forks with each order', type of fancy."  
  
Jess wiggles into her tights while yelling, "Just a second!", and then she races for the door and ignores the fact that only half of her head is curled. "Hi Schmidt, hi, I'm sorry!"  
  
Schmidt waves her off and untucks his hands from the pocket of his khakis to wrap her in a hug. "You look.... Well, I mean, that's a cool hairstyle."  
  
"You're early," she says, and he just laughs. She holds a finger up to him and walks backwards toward her room. "I'll be back! Make yourself comfortable. I think Cece left the TV on, and if you like Doritos, we have a ton of those on the coffee table too even though I keep telling her to start buying organic."  
  
Schmidt passes on the Doritos, but he sits down on the couch with his hands folded in his lap, and then he sits up when he hears a bedroom door open.  
  
"Schmidt?"  
  
It's Cece, and she's definitely not wearing shorts. She's in this knee-length, kind-of-tight black dress. You know, the one that hugs her in all of the right places, the one guys like Schmidt are a sucker for, etcetera, etcetera.  
  
"Is Nicholas not picking you up? That bastard."  
  
She laughs and takes a seat next to him, stretching her legs out onto the coffee table because she can't wrinkle her dress. She watches Schmidt check them out up and down, and then he gulps.  
  
"It's really okay," she says casually. "I'm driving myself."  
  
"To a date?", he asks, narrowing his eyes at her.  
  
"This way I can leave if things get weird."  
  
"Things won't _get weird_ , Cecelia," Schmidt argues.  
  
"Ha! You broke it off with my best friend because you don't know what you want, and Nick and I have been on a total of three dates -- all at a bar, completely wasted. Things _might_ get weird."  
  
Schmidt levels a hand at her and goes, "Fair point."

—

Things get weird.

They get to the restaurant at eight. Schmidt drives Jess and Cece (after a lot of pestering Cece to, "Just get in my car." and, "Are you kidding me? Nick won't care; he's just glad he doesn't have to waste gas money picking you up."). Nick shows up at 8:10 wearing these khakis Schmidt forced him to put on, a plaid button-down shirt, and flip flops, which he's ridiculed for before they even sit down.

" _Flip flops_? You look like you should be playing the maracas for that Mexican Cover Band up there," Schmidt says with a snicker, nodding toward the stage in the front of the restaurant. 

"And you look like a father of two taking his daughters out for cheap tacos," Nick says through gritted teeth, nodding at each girl by Schmidt's side. "Seriously, what the hell is with that Dad Tie?"

"I'm gonna choke you to death with it," Schmidt threatens, reaching his arm out and giving Nick a shove.

"Whoa! Hey, there's enough tacos to go around," Jess jokes, throwing her hands up in defeat. "Come on, let's at least  _try_ to enjoy this ridiculous double date. If it sucks, we can leave and go out for drinks. Or watch  _Clueless_ at my place! Either works."

"Paul Rudd -- what a gem," Schmidt says, and Jess flashes him a little smile as one of the hostesses leads them to their table.

"Here Jessica, I got your chair!", Nick says, and then Schmidt wags a finger at him and says, " _My_  date, _my_  chair-pulling-out duties. Stop trying to steal my spotlight, you animal."  
  
Jess smiles over at Nick and sits down anyway, though, and then she rips the folded napkin off of the table and sets it down in her lap.  
  
"So... do you like sushi?", Nick asks in a panicky voice, and none of them know who he's talking to.  
  
"This is a Mexican restaurant, Nicholas," Schmidt says, taking a seat across from Jess. He was supposed to sit next to her, in Nick Miller's Original Table Plan, but everyone knows dates are more romantic if you're sitting opposite of your lady, and Nick Miller knows nothing about romance.   
  
Cece sits down next to Schmidt and no one pulls out her chair for her -- (See: 'Nick Miller knows nothing about romance'), but she doesn't seem to mind. She just smooths her hands down her dress and she doesn't put her napkin in her lap the way Jess just did. Schmidt silently thinks about whether or not she doesn't mind getting dirty, and then the tightness in his pants snaps him out of it.

"That's -- That's a really nice dress, Cece," says Schmidt, and he gulps. Cece just raises her eyebrows at him. "I forgot to tell you that before."

"You didn't have to mention it at all," she mumbles, and then she opens her menu and ignores the way Schmidt is looking at her.

Jess feels Schmidt's shoe by her ankle underneath the table, and then she thinks, " _Here? At a formal dinner?_ ", but she plays along anyway and lifts up her flats off of the floor, her right foot circling the bottom of his calf a few times.

"Jess...", he mutters, and then he glares at her. "What are you doing?"

"I thought -- We were -- You started it!", she accuses, and suddenly she goes from whispering to straight-up yelling in a fairly quiet Mexican restaurant.

"Whatever I did was accidental," Schmidt says, and Jess's face gets hot. "I'm not a footsie person,  _especially_ when I'm wearing Calvin Klein slacks as nice as these. Do you  _know_ where the bottom of your shoe has been?! You probably got shoe dust on the bottom of my Calvins, Jess!"

Next to him, Cece throws Jess this look, and Jess throws one that says, "SAVE ME!" right back at her, but Cece doesn't say anything, just laughs at Jess Being Jess underneath her breath.

"I'm... I'm sorry," Jess says after a second, and Schmidt nods and tells her it's fine, and then he asks if they should split the nachos -- no cheese, extra guacamole, and absolutely no hot sauce because he's a little bitch and hot sauce makes his eyes sting.

In the middle of all of that, Nick looks up from his menu and closes it shut, and then he says, "I'm sorry, but what's so bad about a little feet play underneath the table?", and then Cece shudders in her seat. "What? You wouldn't like it if I just --" He pauses to lift his foot up out of his flip flop, stretching it out and rubbing it on the bottom of Cece's leg.

"Oh my -- Get your bare foot  _off_   _of my leg_ ," Cece warns, ten seconds from passing out at the contact. "Men in flip flops are just..."

"Creepy?", Schmidt finishes, and Cece points over at him and says, "Yes! Creepy. I don't like it, and now I kind of want to go to the bathroom and rinse off my leg. No offense, or anything."

Nick's red in the face, but he waves a hand at her like it's no big deal. "No, yeah, it's cool, it's cool."

Cece pushes her chair out and stands up, and then so does Schmidt. She just glares at him for a second.

"I have to check on my Calvins," he says seriously, and Jess is trying not to roll her eyes at the dramatics. She doesn't know how much Calvins cost, or what  _shoe dust_ even is, but she does know that she's one-hundred percent done with the night, and her nachos aren't even at the table yet.

Cece lets Schmidt follow her to the bathroom, and then the table gets quiet.

"He's such a dick," Nick says, turning to his right and patting Jess's leg. "Footsie is one of the naughtiest things I've ever done in a restaurant."

Jess is amused. She bats her eyes at him and asks, "What's the naughtiest, though?"

"I boned someone in the kitchen once," he says cooly.

"Did she... work there?", Jess asks.

"Nope." He's too proud, his arms folded across his chest, leaning back in his chair like he's the first person to have ever had sex in public. "Neither of us did."

Jess rolls her eyes, and then she looks at Nick for a few seconds before anyone says anything.

"Jess...," he starts, and she just raises her eyebrows at him. "You can do  _so much better_ than Schmidt, you know."

"I can?", she asks, head titled, like she's genuinely surprised or something. Nick just says, "Well... yeah."

"Look, that's -- That's sweet, Nick, but then why isn't it happening? Like... Why did freakin' Winston have to set me up with someone? Why couldn't I find someone all by myself, you know?" Nick knows. "I'm glad it's working out with you and Cece, though," she says.

"Right, me and Cece, that's --" He pauses because a waiter comes over to their table and refills their water glasses, and then when he walks away, Nick rubs his lips together and goes, "I think Winston set Cece up with the wrong guy, Jess."

"That's crazy, Nick. You're great! Look, if this is about you not driving her here, it's fine, she's over it. Schmidt took her."

"Ha. 'Schmidt took her'. Literally." 

"Took her -- Took her  _where_?", Jess asks.

"Um. From me, actually," he says, rubbing his chin. "I noticed it the other night when he took care of her after she puked, and now he follows her to the bathroom and she  _lets him_? Jess, no one's ever let Schmidt follow them anywhere. One time, he followed a pretty girl into a Dunkin' Donuts and she filed a restraining order against him."

"Yeah, okay, Schmidt hits on her a little bit, but Cece isn't into  _him_."

Nick lifts up a finger at her and wags it. "That's where you're wrong, Jessica," he says. "Ask Cece how she feels about you and Schmidt getting serious and see how she reacts."

Jess's face drops, and she shakes her head at Nick. "But we're not getting serious at all. You saw The Great Footsie Incident of 2016! There's no coming back from that one."

"Well," Nick says, "pretend you are."

" _Why_?" She's not catching on. Probably because she's not the best schemer of her friends. (That's Winston, or so he _thinks_.)

"Because, Jess, you and I deserve to not waste our time, don't you think?"

She thinks about it for a second, about lying to her best friend, about pretending things between her and Schmidt are actually... you know...  _there_. And then she looks at Nick, who's sitting next to her looking at her the way he is, and something in her stomach sinks. 

"Okay," she surrenders, nodding at Nick. "I'll do it, but only because we deserve something really good, and if -- if it's not  _them_ , well..."

"Well then it'll be someone else," he says, and he throws this assuring smile in her direction, as if he can see Jess's future right in front of him on the table or something.

"Yeah," Jess agrees, tugging down on her lip with her teeth, "maybe it will be."

—

Jess yawns and refills her coffee mug for the third time, and then Cece shoots her a look from where she's sitting at the kitchen table and goes, "Whoa. Slow down, killer."

"Sorry," Jess apologizes, stretching out her arms. "It's just... We were up  _all night_ talking."

" _We_ as in...?"

"Oh!" Jess laughs and sets down her mug on the counter, and then she sits down in one of the chairs across from Cece, her hands folded on the tabletop. "Schmidt. I know things didn't work the first time, but after we shared that plate of nachos at dinner last night, I kind of felt a spark."

"From  _nachos_."

"From nachos, yes."

"What, did like, your hands meet in the middle while you were both reaching for the guacamole and you  _knew_?"

That would've been a good way to tell the story. (Note to Jess: Next time you need to tell a story involving Fake Chemistry and a plate of nachos, use that.) 

"No, but I like him, and he likes me, and we're going to give it another shot."

Jess watches Cece gulp, and then she goes, "Y-You are?" 

Jess has seen Cece with a broken heart only a few times before. Once, when her dad died when they were twelve. Another time, when Kyle, the most serious boyfriend she's ever had, left her for another model at the agency. She pretended not to be fazed by it, because, -- " _It's totally fine. Relationships are shitty anyway, Jess._ " -- but she was. This is the same look, and Cece thinks she's being subtle, but she's definitely not.

"Why? Should we  _not_?", asks Jess, and Cece just frantically waves a hand at her. "Good, because we want to do it.  _Everywhere_. My bedroom, our living room, the fire escape outside our window..."

Cece looks horrified for a few seconds, and then she says, "Okay, no, you're  _Jess_. You'd never have sex on a fire escape. What's going on?"

" _What's going on_ ," Jess says, "is that Schmidt and I are in love, and he's  _probably_ going to be my Future Baby Daddy, and I just love it when he wears that tight little robe. Mmm."

"The kimono?", Cece asks, correcting Jess. "You  _do_?"

"I sure do! -- Don't. I don't. Okay. I can't sit here and lie and say I like that contraption. It's offensive, and I get scared something is just going to... pop on out of it every time he puts it on."

Cece scrunches up her nose and goes, "Eww, but okay."

"Cece, I don't -- Me and Schmidt --  _Nick_ \--"

"Nick? What about Nick?", Cece asks, and Jess just grunts in response. "Did he say something about me?"

"Ugh. Damn you, Day! They told you that you could keep a secret, and you failed them."

Cece's lost. "Who's 'they', exactly?" 

"It doesn't matter. Cece, look, Schmidt and I aren't serious. We aren't  _anything_. You saw how loudly he yelled at me for attempting to play footsie with him last night." 

Who could forget? Cece rubs her lips together and tries to stifle a laugh at the memory. "Jess..."

"I only said we were serious to see how you'd react, and Nick was right: You're totally into Schmidt."

"I -- Wait.  _What_? Nick thinks I'm into Schmidt? _You_ think I'm into Schmidt?"

"Just tell me if you are," says Jess. "I won't be mad, I promise,  _pinky promise_ , --"

"Not now, Jess," Cece says, shaking her head and grabbing onto Jess's hand with one of hers, her pinky out of range. 

"Cece, if you like Schmidt, well... You like Schmidt! Winston  _obviously_ sucks at matchmaking, but you like Schmidt. So what?"

"So  _tons_ , Jess," Cece says. "Like... I don't know... he's  _Schmidt_."

Jess chuckles. "Ceec. If you have feelings for someone, well... Feelings are important, right? They're  _special_ , and they're magical and rare and  _good_."

"Jess, babe,  _you_ think they're special and magical and rare and good because you don't mess things up as much as I do," Cece says, and Jess just wrinkles her nose. 

"So you  _do_ like Schmidt," Jess says, and then she gets up in Cece's face and starts wagging a finger at her. "Cece! This is good, right? You never have feelings for anyone. I mean, you and Nick, you guys had  _fun_ , but he isn't  _Schmidt_ , and --"

"Oh God." Cece widens her eyes and starts to shake her head, and Jess grabs her by the wrist and tells her to calm down. "I can't just ditch Nick for his best friend, Jess! What would that make me?"

"A terrible person, probably, but..."

"Jess!"

"Cece, I'm kidding. You and Nick aren't even serious, you just -- You have to break it off with him nicely, okay?"

Cece plays with her hands and rolls her eyes at Jess, and then she goes, "No."

"Cecelia, don't do this to him. Just... go over there and tell him it isn't working out and then go home and  _don't_ bone Schmidt right away."

Jess feels like the mom of a teenager about to give her daughter The Sex Talk for the first time. 

"Cece, I'm serious," she says after a few seconds of silence. "Don't screw Nick over like that. He's  _nice_."

Cece bites down on her lip and picks up her coffee mug, bringing it over to the sink. (She won't wash the dishes, though. That's always Jess's job.) When she turns around to sit back down at the table, she asks, "Jess, why do you care about Nick's feelings so much?"

"You wanna know why?", Jess asks her, and Cece's like, "Duh. That's why I asked."

"Nick," Jess starts, and she plays with the rim of her glasses, pushing them up higher on the bridge of her nose. It's what she does when she needs to distract herself for a second, and Cece catches on and tells her to 'Just say it!'. "Fine. Nick strikes me as a guy who hasn't had very many people care about his feelings before, okay?"

Cece lets out this little laugh, and then she says, "So why don't you be the first?"

Jess won't tell her right here, flat out, that she's thought about it before. (Dinner, last night, when the nachos came and Nick told Jess, "I like the way you eat nachos" as if there was a technique to it, or something. Then she spilled a little bit of salsa on her lap and he used his own napkin to wipe it off of her tights.)

"Maybe I will be."

—

Cece chickens out. 

She and Jess sit in the living room for  _two hours_ preparing what she has to say to Nick. It's simple, Jess assures her, but she still doesn't think she can do it because she's not confrontational despite how mean other girls assume she might be, and she's really bad at telling people how she feels -- (or doesn't feel, sorry Nick Miller).

Jess is a sucker, and she's afraid of a lot of things, but she's not a chicken.

She knocks on the apartment door twice before it opens, and part of her hopes it's Schmidt and she could just use a lame excuse like, "I was in the neighborhood!" or something, because that'd be much easier than showing up at Nick Miller's place and breaking his heart in his doorway.

"Jess?" And... it's Nick. He's barefoot and wearing just boxers and a t-shirt, and it's what, four, five P.M.? Is this his first time all day out of bed? "What's up?"

Jess clears her throat, and she goes to play with the glasses she doesn't have on, and -- "I'm dumping you, Miller."

Nick laughs. "You're  _dumping me_? I mean, I'm flattered, most girls just send me an email or a quick text, but  _damn_ , you showed up in such a nice outfit and everything."

She looks down to the floor at her flats, and then back up at Nick, and then she swallows thickly. "Cece's dumping you, Nick. I'm  _so_ sorry. I told her to do it herself, and I even wrote her  _lines_ , but she's so bad at this stuff and I'm -- Okay, I'm not good at it either, and now you're looking at me like one of my students looks at me when I tell them they can't bring in a live animal for Show and Tell."

Nick rubs his chin, and then he shakes his head, his eyes narrowed. "So our plan worked?"

They had a plan? "Um,  _our plan_?"

"You told Cece you and Schmidt were getting serious. She admitted to liking Schmidt. She sent you here to dump me."

Right. They had a plan. "I... guess that's what happened, yeah. Nick, I'm so sorry, okay? Look, Cece's my best friend, but you don't deserve this. I don't know you very well, but you deserve love and someone who won't send their best friend to dump you without at least a speech prepared or something."

Nick shushes her, and then he inches in closer, taking his index finger up to her lip and setting it there. Gross, but also endearing. Jess just stands still.

"We're a good team, huh, Jess?", he asks when he pulls away from her.

She bats her eyes a few times, and she's almost positive her face is beet red, and whatever  _something_ she's feeling in this doorway right now is there, but she won't say it out loud. She thinks back to her conversation with Cece this afternoon, why she even cares about Nick's feelings when she barely knows anything about him, but she does. Now they're in his doorway and his finger is on her lips and he's not even mad at her for showing up out-of-the-blue to dump him, and Jess thinks about Winston and how wrong he might've been on this one even if he called himself a "Love Doctor" at that Christmas Eve party in 2010 when he sneakily hung mistletoe over his friend Coach and Cece and they made out.

"Yeah, Nick, we're a good team," she says, and then she leaves his apartment.

—

Winston takes Cece and Jess out for brunch in the middle of one of his shifts, and the second their French toast gets to the table, he yells at them.

"You reversed my matchmaking?!" He slams his fork down and shoves his plate away from him with a huff, and then he looks at Cece and Jess across from him with narrowed eyes. "Do you two ever listen?!"

"Not really, no."

"There were no established rules!"

"To be fair," says Cece, "you're not always right about things."

Winston lifts a finger to argue, but Jess interrupts him and goes, "Don't fight back with the Coach and Cece thing. They kissed once, and I watched. It was  _sloppy_."

Cece turns her head to Jess and widens her eyes. "Hey!"

"Yeah,  _hey_!", shouts Winston. "Coach is smooth with the ladies."

"Right, just like you are?", Jess asks sarcastically, and Winston just rubs his lips together. "You and Aly work because you're different. She puts up with you leaving cat toys all around the house, and you put up with the fact that she was in a motorcycle gang in 2007. You set me up with Schmidt because you thought we were the same, and you set Cece up with Nick because you thought they were the same, and... I don't know. Maybe we shouldn't be with people who are  _Us_  but with a penis."

Winston squints his eyes at Jess, and then he laughs. "Sorry, I was just picturing Nick and Schmidt with Cece and Jess Wigs on, and it was  _good_."

"Winston, you can't get mad at us because you suck at matchmaking, you just can't," says Jess.

"I was honestly just trying to help you," he says, and now he looks serious. "You two are the best people I know, and Nick and Schmidt, they're  _doofuses_ , but they're also the best people I know, so... I don't know. Did I picture me and Aly and you guys and Nick and Schmidt all frolicking through meadows going on Triple Wine Tasting Dates? Maybe. But it was more than that; it was about you guys being happy."

"We can still be happy," Cece says, lifting a finger up. "Right, Jess?"

"Okay, no, _you and Schmidt_ can still be happy," Jess says nervously, and she starts to wiggle in her seat. "Ol' Jessica Day is gonna have to get out there, start dating again, maybe venture into the world of dating apps or something."

—

Jess makes an account on this dating app called Dice. It's so stupid, and the Love Of Her Life can't be on  _Dice_ , and one night when she's scrolling through an endless amount of Los Angeles bachelors, she thinks about Nick Miller for longer than three seconds. In her head, it works.

—

Cece tells Schmidt how she feels about him, because at this point, it's stupid not to.

They're at Cece and Jess's place, because Schmidt still lives with Nick, and Cece's not about to venture into that territory right now. 

"Hi, Schmidt!", Jess says happily when she walks into the kitchen and they're both sitting there, because it doesn't have to be weird. 

Schmidt waves at her, because they're definitely past The Great Footsie Incident of 2016, and Jess would be lying if she said the way Cece and Schmidt look at each other didn't make her happy.

"I'm heading out, so you two can definitely... you know...", Jess says, and then she wiggles her eyebrows and starts to make this  _noise_ , and Cece points a finger at her and goes, "Out, Jess! Don't you have errands? It's Wednesday."

"Then I... definitely have errands," she says, grabbing her purse off of the kitchen table and heading out of the apartment.

—

Again: Jess Day doesn't call or text, she just shows up.

Luckily, it's a Wednesday and Nick Miller is a bartender and his only task for today was:  **Put on pants**. Wait. No. It was:  **Put on pants?** with a question mark on the end, because he  _might_ put on pants. (He didn't put on pants, B-T-W.)

"Jess?" He's holding onto the doorframe and he looks tired, or pissed off, or --

"If this is a bad time..."

"It's not. I was just in my room writing some Walking Dead fan fiction."

Jess laughs, her head titled back. "I've read Walking Dead fan fiction before," she says.

Nick tells her to come inside, so she does, and then she apologizes for not having any cupcakes.

"That's okay," Nick says, taking a seat down on the couch. "So you wanna hangout?"

"Well, yeah," Jess says, and then she takes a seat on the couch too. "Nick, can I be blunt?"

He says, "Most women in my life sadly are."

"Not -- Okay, I like you, and I think if you like being around someone, you should tell them," she says, because she's never had much trouble being  _out there_. 

Nick's not  _out there_. He's never been  _out there_. He says the wrong things, at all of the wrong times, to the wrong girls. Jess is not... Okay, Nick barely knows her, he just knows what Winston's told him about her, or what he came across when he stalked her Instagram account, or...

"I mean, you're, you know,  _yeah_ ," is Nick's answer, because he's Nick. Jess just raises an eyebrow at him, but he doesn't owe her anything, so she stays quiet and sinks back into his couch. "You dumped me last week and I still like ya'. You know that?"

Jess scrunches her nose and remembers "dumping him" for Cece in his apartment exactly seven days ago. Then she remembers being dumped by everyone she's ever been dumped by, and her stomach hurts. "It was a crappy thing to do, Nick. I'm sorry. You deserve more than that."

"You gonna write me a breakup speech?", he asks teasingly, but Jess actually contemplates it. "Wait, for real? Okay, make it  _good_. Double-spaced, no spelling errors, all the works."

"I'm Jessica Day. I'm a  _sucker_ for MLA Format, Nick."

Nick laughs at her, and then he says, "I hope you know, Jess, that you gotta wait for someone who understands that."

"What? MLA Format? I know! It's important."

"No, no," he says, shaking his head, "just how... different you are."

Jess isn't like any girl Nick's ever hung around before. There was Amelia, who let him serenade her with crappy ( _crappy_ ) love ballads in college back when braces and wanna-be dreadlocks were a thing. There was Caroline, who said, "Hey Nick, is this your heart?" and then sat on it a few hundred times. There was Julia, who was so out of his league she was in another  _tournament_. Then there's Jess, and she's not -- They're not -- Jess isn't afraid to say how she feels, and she's not afraid of who she is, but Nick  _is_ a little afraid of her.

She clears her throat and snaps Nick out of his thoughts. "Hey, I'm kind of glad that Winston screwed up with that whole Me-And-Schmidt Thing, aren't you?"

Nick doesn't know how to answer her without sounding pathetic, so he just nods slowly. He thinks about a Nick-And-Jess Thing, and a part of him wants to believe the way Jess is looking at him right now means she is too.


	4. FOUR.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all for being so patient. Here's chapter four!
> 
> (And yes, there's a Nick/Jess/Toilet Seat In a Men's Bathroom scene in this chapter, because I'm such a slut for those.)

**FOUR.**

"You're dragging us to a strip club. For your Bachelor Party. And you invited  _girls_. To your Bachelor Party."

"Cecelia, it's 2016. Get yo' head out of yo'  _ass_! Girls can totally attend a Bachelor Party."

Cece rolls her eyes and buckles the clasp on her right heel, huffing in Winston's direction.

"And it's not a  _strip club_. It's the Velvet Rabbit! Exotic dance club, maybe, but not a  _strip club_."

Jess is fine with it, for some reason, because, "Maybe I'll meet a guy so I can forget all about your terrible matchmaking skills, Winston."

Cece  _has_ a guy (kind of), and she's over that party-era every twenty-something goes through (kind of), and Aly's totally subtle, totally low-key, bachelorette party in some Italian restaurant next week sounds more fun than  _this_ (kind of).

"Jess, you're not going to meet the love of your life in a strip club," Cece says, and Winston's talking over her about how it could happen.

"Yeah, it could happen!", agrees Jess. "Some of the best people in the world love exotic dancers."

"Name one," says Cece.

"Uh." Jess squints her eyes at Cece, and then she takes a breath. "Oh! My dad!"

"Your dad is  _insane_ , Jessica, and he's dating someone your age. Just -- Whatever. I'm going for Winston."

"You're goin' for Winston," Winston repeats, and then he snaps on his clip-on tie (-- he can't tie a real one, obviously) and leads Cece and Jess out of their apartment.

—

"N-Nick -- Nick's gonna be there?", Jess asks in the car, and Winston casually goes, "Duh. He's my best man."

"Really? I thought Schmidt was your best man," Cece says, confused. "He goes on and on and on about how close you two are."

"Schmidt and I  _are_ close. With Nick in the room. When he's gone we just -- We fight like sisters. Do you know, one time I was  _thiiis_ close to finishing my puzzle," he says, and he takes one hand off of the wheel to pinch his index finger and his thumb almost-together, "and Schmidt started insulting me; telling me I was doing it all wrong, that I should've laid out the corner pieces first. I gave up, went in my room, cried for three days, and then I never touched a puzzle again, dammit."

"I know that story," says Cece. "Schmidt told you how much you sucked, -- because you  _did_ \--, and then you two got all weird until Nick came back from Chicago. Did you really set his pants on fire?"

"By accident," Winston says, defensively raising a finger at her. "Wait, how do you know that story?"

Cece shrugs like it's not a big deal and says, "I know tons of Schmidt's stories. All we talk about are our stories."

"What? I just thought you two boned and went home to your own beds before ten P.M. I had no idea there were _stories_."

"Oh. Oh! Winston doesn't know?!", Jess exclaims, and Cece reaches into the backseat and slaps Jess on the wrist. That (obviously) doesn't stop her. Not much does. "Schmidt spends like, every night at our place. Sometimes I get up to pee at two, three A.M., -- weak bladder, lots of midnight juice trips, -- and I'll just hear them awake, talking."

"Shame, shame, Cecelia." Winston takes his other hand off of the wheel and rubs his two index fingers together and Cece tries to ignore him because she's still mad about being dragged to the Velvet Rabbit.

"You liiiiike him!", Winston says once he parks, and then he stops teasing Cece for a second to lean his head out of the window. "Valet? Nah, self-park! Valet is  _twelve dollars_ , man. It's my bachelor party, I ain't paying!"

He swerves his car into the next lane over and parks it himself against the sidewalk kind of terribly, and then he twists the keys out of the ignition and turns to the backseat, smiling at Cece. 

"Is Cece Parekh  _in love_?", he coos, and she just rolls her eyes. "Come on, my matchmaking worked, girl!"

"Your matchmaking," Cece says with a little bit of an attitude, "did the opposite of 'worked'. You set me up with freakin' Nick Miller! I had to make out with him on his bed full of granola bar wrappers to a very outdated OMC song. I'll never be the same."

Jess laughs at that, and then she goes, "That doesn't sound like a bad afternoon to me, actually."

"It was actually night, and it was  _dark_ , because he's too insecure to have sex with the lights on, and -- Wait. It doesn't?"

"I mean. You know. It's. Winston, isn't your party starting, let's go!"

"No, no, we have time for  _this_ , ladies," Winston says, pressing Jess on.

"We  _definitely_ have time for this. Babe, do you like Nick or something?"

Jess looks at Cece and rubs her lips together, trying not to nervously laugh. Does she? Does she like Nick? Let's see, they've had a total of what... three, four conversations? But he likes her cupcakes, and she'd actually feel comfortable trying her Daffy Duck impression in front of him, even if he judged her, and he's... you know... he's not  _bad looking_ or anything. She shakes off all of those feelings and unbuckles her seatbelt, and then she turns to Cece and Winston. "Absolutely not. Tonight is about Winston's very weird bachelor party, but it's also about letting Little Jess have some fun."

"I forgot that you call your vagina Little Jess," Winston says. "I don't hate it."

—

They get inside and everyone's already there. There's Winston's cop buddy Dugan, who's already knee-deep in two dancers on a couch in the back. Robby's this dude Winston knows through Schmidt and he's hanging up a banner that says, 'CONGRATULATIONS, WILSON'. (Wrong name, nice sentiment). Nick and Schmidt are going in on a plate of the Velvet Rabbit's forty-dollar wings, but when Winston walks in with Cece and Jess, they both stop eating.

Jess's stomach drops when she looks at Nick, but not because he's  _Nick_ or anything, just because Cece and Winston grilled her about the crush she DOESN'T have on him two minutes ago.

Cece races over to Schmidt until she feels Jess and Winston's eyes on her, and then she slows down and takes these three little baby steps toward him and pecks him on the cheek. 

Jess and Winston share  _a look_ , and then Cece pulls away from Schmidt and clears her throat and goes, "A-Are the wings here any good?"

"Nicholas would describe them to you as, 'Better than a lobster dinner', but that's because he's poor and can't afford lobster. Do you want lobster, Cecelia? I'll get you anything you want. Anything. You name it, baby."

Cece shakes her head at Schmidt and tells him to stop trying to buy her things. Money's never impressed her. (Neither has lobster, yuck.) 

"I'm not... I didn't come to dance with anyone," Schmidt yell-whispers right in Cece's ear, because the techno music in this place is  _ridiculous_. 

Cece loops one of her arms through his and nods, her nose wrinkling. She's not usually one for affection, and she knows Jess is watching  _just_ so she can taunt her about it later, but she kisses him right in the middle of the Velvet Rabbit.

"C'mon, let's go  _not_ get hit on by exotic dancers and eat crappy wings back there," Schmidt says, and then he leads Cece toward the back of the place.

"Okay,  _they're_ clearly lame, but we're about to part-ayyy!", Winston cheers, pulling three beers out of the bucket someone already ordered from the center of the table and handing one to Jess and Nick. "Look excited, y'all."

Jess shakes her head and sets her beer down on the table. "I'm sorry, it's just... Why didn't you like my idea about the craft-themed bachelor party? It's much more tasteful."

"I'd rather be there than here," Nick says, pointing to Dugan, who's got three dancers on him now, and still strong as ever. "I'm more of a Personal Space type of guy, and dancers freak me out. I like gymnasts though."

"Right?! How good are the Summer Olympics?", Jess asks, and she and Nick look at each other and smile for the first time all night. She doesn't know why it feels awkward, and by the look on his face, neither does he -- but it does. Jess feels a ping of awkwardness from her toes to her chest, and then she bats her eyelashes and clears her throat and looks back at Winston, because Winston's easier to look at than Nick is.

—

Bachelor parties get wild after eight P.M., apparently, and Winston's is nothing short of "wild".

Aly calls Jess in the middle of it all, and she has to run and hide in the bathroom just to get a good enough signal to talk to her. 

"It's... certainly going well," Jess says, closing the stall door behind her. "I'm sorry you're bored, but you can't come, it's just Wedding Protocol. Winston sends his love.  _No_ , he's not dan -- Oh! You  _want_ him to? Ha. His last lap dance ever! Okay, I'll let him know it's  _totally_ fine that he danced with Fantasy, then. Bye, Aly."

"Hey! Who's Fantasy?"

"AHH. WHAT ARE YOU --"

"I'm kind of drunk." It's Nick. He's sitting on the toilet seat, fully clothed, a beer in hand. "This is the men's bathroom, is it not?"

"No, it is, the women's bathroom didn't have good cell reception and Aly's been blowing up my phone all night," Jess says with a huff.

"Protective future wife, huh?", Nick laughs.

"More like 'Bored and wishing she could attend a bachelor party' future wife, but."

Nick wrinkles his nose and scoots over on the seat, and then he goes, "Sit, Jess."

So she does. She sits down on a semi-clean toilet seat in the men's bathroom of the Velvet Rabbit next to Nick Miller, the man Winston set her best friend up with. Weird.

(She's a little drunk, too. Just a little.)

"Jessica Day, what are your hopes and dreams?", he asks out of nowhere, holding his almost-empty beer bottle to her mouth like a microphone.

"To get out of this damn strip club and go home? I have a scarf to finish knitting."

"It's unseasonably warm in L.A. right now, babe. No need."

"Scarves are  _always in_ ," she argues, and then she grabs the beer bottle right out of Nick's hand and holds it up to his mouth. "Nicholas Miller, how many exotic dancers hit on you tonight?"

"Too many. I liked Karma, and apparently Fantasy liked everyone but me, and I feel like Princess was pretty kind. She gave me back the twenty I threw at her."

"A  _twenty_?! Why did Schmidt joke about you paying in nickels before, then?"

Nick rubs his chin and shakes his head. "Oh, because Sober Nick pays in nickels."

Jess laughs, scooting further onto the toilet seat despite its grossness and the fact that this is a  _men's_ bathroom and men always miss. (Ew.) "My hopes and dreams are to become principal of the school I teach at, but it -- it seems like no matter how hard I work, the role always goes to someone else. I just -- I think I'd be a really good principal, Nick. I love kids."

"You seem like the principal-type. You got the glasses and the hair and the -- the polka dots," he says, pointing to the red dress she's wearing tonight that most  _certainly_ doesn't have any polka dots on it. "Lemme guess: You do everyone else's work but they  _still_ don't give you the job."

"Yes. Yes! Is that how it is for you at the bar?"

"What? No. I do whatever I want there and I don't expect a promotion because I literally peed in the cash register once."

Jess wrinkles her nose at that, and then she goes, "What are your hopes and dreams then, Nick Miller? Spill it  _all_ , right here, in this bathroom."

Nick clears his throat. "You ready? Okay. I'd like to grow two to three more inches, because right now Schmidt and I are around the same, and I have to beat him at something. I wanna finish my Zombie novel. I got to the first sentence. It's: "The boy --" and then it just cuts off, because I suck. Um, I guess -- I guess one day I'd like to meet a girl and fall in love and have a family, but that's unrealistic because Cece was supposed to be The One but she doesn't even pay attention to me. Schmidt steals all my girls!"

She raises a finger to him, and part of her feels bad about how much of himself he just poured out in this cramped bathroom stall. He's deep, deeper than Jess thought, and she likes deep. "I like your height, for starters. Also, my advice for the novel is: Just write, dammit! Don't be lazy. And Cece, she's -- I live with her, and Schmidt is over every single day, and I don't know, I know she won't admit to it because she's Cece, but she's gonna fall in love with him if she hasn't already. Guys aren't usually very nice to Cece."

"Oh, I  _know_ how nice Schmidt is to Cece. He brags about how nicely he 'cleans out her sea cave', and now I never want to go into the ocean again," he groans.

Jess pats his knee and sighs. "Nick, you guys didn't connect anyway. She told me, you told me. Let it go."

"It's just..." He shakes Jess's hand off of his leg and stands up, taking his empty beer bottle out of her hands and setting it down on the floor. "I don't wanna be alone."

It's a promise she's not certain she can keep, because she can't tell the future and she's actually kind of terrible at matchmaking. (Not as terrible as freakin'  _Winston_ , but she's pretty bad.) "I'm gonna find you a girl, Nick, whether she's in this strip club or hanging out at some snooty little art gallery in Los Angeles. I'm gonna make sure you're not alone, because someone as nice as you can't be.  _Won't be_."

—

Everyone takes a bunch of shots Robby orders for the group, and by 10:02 P.M., they're  _hammered_.

Jess forgets all about her promise to Nick, and Nick finds Fantasy and lets her give him, "The Dance of His Life", as Fantasy coins all of her dances for extra tips.

Winston pays for Jess's next three drinks, and by 10:11 P.M.  _exact_ , she can barely remember her name. "Jessica. Hi, I'm Dessica Jay, pleased to -- Wait, that's not right..."

"Jess, you  _need_ to meet this dude!", Winston says, grabbing her by the arm and pulling her away from the table. The straw from the drink she's sipping is still dangling in her mouth, and she spits it out onto the ground.

"Dude? What? No! Winston, we should be calling a taxi home, it's late and I'm --"

" _This_ ," Winston says, "is Sam. Sam I Am. Or am not. Ain't no one in here a Dr. Seuss book!"

Sam. Sam extends his hand and shakes Jess's, and she sloppily shakes his back. "It's Sam Sweeney. I'm actually Winston's doctor. He's spoken pretty highly of you, Jess. Rumor has it you love ribbons, compromise, and those sad dog commercials on TV."

Jess rolls her eyes and leans into Winston, whispering, "You invited your  _doctor_ to your bachelor party? Laaaaame!"

Sam grabs onto Jess's wrist and spins her around toward the  _actual_ Winston, who Jess _did not_ lean into before. "Hey, how many drinks have you had tonight?"

Jess lifts up her right hand and starts to count. "One... two... seven...?"

Sam effortlessly slides a hand right onto the small of Jess's back and asks her if he can make it eight. "Eight drinks," he says when she screams, "WHAAAT?" at him over the music. "I mean, can I buy you a drink, Jess?"

Jess looks to Winston like she needs permission or something, but it's mostly because she's too drunk and she has no idea who Sam even  _is_ \-- besides Winston's primary care doctor. 

"Go!", Winston presses on, giving Jess a shove. "Sam, take good care of her. She's one of our best."

Sam salutes Winston, and then he slips his hand into one of Jess's, and she lets him. She's a total hand-holder. 

"You got it," Sam promises. "This bachelor party has  _just_ begun."

—

"Nick, get Fantasy off of you -- I did it! Winnie did it! I set up my doctor with Jess, and it  _has_ to work, because I'm super good at matchmaking."

Nick slides a five dollar bill at Fantasy and just smiles when she steps off of his lap and winks at him, and then he looks at Winston and shakes his head. "You actually suck at it, because it's the night of your bachelor party and I'm getting a lap dance from Fantasy while Schmidt is in the corner with his hand down the shirt of someone who was  _supposed_ to be my girl, but... Wait. Jess. You set  _Jess_ up?"

Winston sits on the armrest of the couch Nick is on. "That's what I  _just_ said, dude. How drunk are you?"

"I'm not. Okay, that's a lie. I'm hammered. But I just... Why did you set her up? It didn't work the first time, so what makes you think it's gonna work now?"

"Why do you care, man? You're gonna be a bitter old dude hanging outside of supermarkets asking for change. No offense, man, I love ya'."

"True point. Who knows, maybe Sam'll be who she needs, you know?", Nick says, and Winston's too drunk to pay attention to the bitterness in his voice.

—

The night goes on, and Nick doesn't get anymore dances from Fantasy -- or any of the other exotic dancers. Winston orders the two of them their last round of shots at around one in the morning, and they sit on this velvet couch in the back of the club, the music getting a little lower.

"You're getting  _married_ , man!", Nick yells after Shot #1, and Winston takes his shot and then shakes his head.

"Can you believe it? It feels like just yesterday Aly pulled me over for breaking suddenly on that street where all the stray cats hang out."

"And now you're getting married."

"And now we're  _getting married_."

"Are you freaked out, my man? Like... it's a big step, right?"

Winston nods and takes Shot #2, and once the back of his throat is done burning, he says, "I don't know. I think, once you find someone you really love, you don't want to let them go, you know? So marriage, it's like... It's scary when you think about what it is, but Aly, she makes it easy. Marriage doesn't scare me anymore when -- when I think about spending the rest of my life with Aly. She's _Aly_."

Nick bites down on his lip and watches Jess and Sam by the counter at the bar, clinking their glasses together. A second passes and then Sam leans in for a kiss, and Jess obliges, and Nick's head starts to hurt when he tries to guess if that's the first kiss they shared tonight. He doesn't even know why it's bothering him so much; Winston set up Jess with Schmidt, and then it sucked, and now he set her up with someone else to make up for the fact that Setup #1 sucked, and Nick needs to let it go. Jess isn't his -- she never was, Winston clearly doesn't ever want her to be, and Nick needs to stop pretending what it'd be like if she were in his head.


	5. FIVE.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Nick and Jess don't have their shit together, and they probably won't have their shit together for a few more (a lot more) chapters, but that's okay. That makes for enjoyable -- and emotional -- reading, no? Wink.

**FIVE.**

"Jessica... Oh, Jessica. You're a..." He pauses, and then he winks at himself in the mirror --  _Confidence, Miller, confidence_. "You can do this," he tells himself, clearing his throat. "Jessica, we haven't known each other long, and I mostly like you for your baking skills -- Kidding, kidding, but  _those cupcakes_."

He pauses again to wink at himself, again, and he can't shake Jess out of his head no matter how hard he tries. He starts over. "Jess, you're a beautiful woman, and when I'm around you I forget what time feels like, which is probably a good thing. You're... You should be my boo, baby doll." He widens his eyes in a panic and starts to frantically shake his head, and then he goes, "Oh God, I'm turning into Schmidt, I'm turning into  _Schmidt_."

"You're worse than I am, actually."

"SCHMIDT, WHAT THE --"

"Nicholas, you can't tell a girl you 'mostly like her for her baking skills'."

"I agree," chimes in Cece, and Nick yells out, "WAIT, YOU'RE  _BOTH_ HERE?!"

Cece starts laughing, cupping a hand over her mouth. "Don't give Jess that speech. Please, for the love of God, and those terrible rom-coms she likes, just... don't do it."

"I wasn't..."

Cece lets out this breath, and then she looks like she feels sorry for him, and Nick hates when people feel  _sorry_ for him. (It happens a lot.) "Nick, if you're into Jess, why didn't you... I don't know...  _tell her_?"

He plays with his hands and turns away from the mirror and never wants to look into one again. His cheeks are so red. 

"She's been on three dates with Sam," Cece says bluntly, holding up three fingers as if Nick doesn't know what 'three' means, and when he just nods slowly in response, Schmidt makes his way over to him and throws an arm around his shoulder, pecking him on the cheek.

"Did that kiss make it a little better?", he asks Nick.

"NOT ONE BIT, MAN!", Nick shouts, giving Schmidt a shove.

"This is the first time I've seen Jess happy since  _Spencer_ ," Cece says, and Nick remembers the whole Spencer deal. He'd deck the guy right in the mouth, if he could. (Only, maybe Spencer would punch back even harder, and Nick's kind of scared of violence. -- And the ocean, and those man-sandals that buckle in the back, and The Loch Ness Monster.)

"Just... don't do anything to ruin it, okay? You don't get to ruin it. She's  _happy_."

"I agree with Cece," says Schmidt, nodding matter-of-factly. "You're always too late. For everything."

"Schmidt, you dick, if this is about that work dinner you invited me to in 2008,  _get over it_. I showed up like, ten minutes late  _and_ I brought donuts."

"A half-eaten box of Boston Cremes doesn't count, you dingbat. I'm still waiting for an 'I'm sorry' card."

"How about this?:  _I'm sorry_ that you're an asshole. Now shut up."

Schmidt gulps and mockingly salutes Nick. "Nick, just... leave this Jess thing alone, okay? It's not gonna happen."

"I know it isn't, man," he says, obviously disappointed.

"Do you? You were rehearsing a speech to her in our bathroom mirror. You called her 'boo'."

"You told me women  _liked_ being called 'boo', Schmidt," Nick says bitterly.

Cece tugs down on her lip and looks sorry for Nick again, but then she says, "Stay away from Jess. The girl's had enough confusion as far as her love life goes, and Sam seems to be making her happy, so just..."

"Don't do anything," Nick says, nodding in annoyance. "Got it."

—

"Hi, Ceec!"

Cece hasn't seen Jess this happy in... When did the whole Spencer Thing happen again?

"Hey babe." She sets the groceries down onto the kitchen table -- Jess will put them away, she loves putting groceries away. ("Therapeutic? Check! Teaches me organization skills? Check! Lets me sneak all the good snacks before dinner is ready? Check!")

"Can't put the groceries away today," Jess says, and she's in a rush, scurrying around the kitchen with one hand trying to fasten her earring while the other works on pulling up her tights. "Sam is taking me to some banquet. Doctors. Surgeons. _Super_ fancy."

Cece wiggles her eyebrows and goes, "Oooh. I take it he's trying to show you off as much as possible, huh?"

Jess shrugs modestly. "I don't think he's  _showing me off_ , but if he is... well... I'm not complaining about it."

Cece's just happy to see Jess  _happy_. Guys like Jess for like, two days, and then she gets serious and they stay not-serious and she falls in love and they stop returning her calls, and Cece has to hold her while she watches  _Dirty Dancing_ on loop for two days.

"How's Schmidt?", Jess asks, fastening the back of her earring successfully and sitting down at one of the kitchen chairs, struggling to pull up her tights past her knee. 

"Schmidt's  _Schmidt_ ," Cece says, biting down on her lip.

"As if I'm supposed to know what that means," Jess answers, rolling her eyes. "Are you guys happy?"

Cece squints at Jess, and then after a second, she says, "He makes me so happy, Jess. Like, I don't even  _mind_ it when he recaps an entire episode of  _The Talk_ , and he uses a white noise machine at night because he can't fall asleep without it, and I don't even want to throw it out the window. I don't want to be with anyone else, and I'm  _me_. I'm always running away from things. I wouldn't run away from Schmidt, though."

"I can't wait to feel that way about Sam," Jess says, blushing. Then she stands up from the table after The Tights Dilemma is over, slipping her flats on and racing over to Cece, hugging her from behind. "When's the last time we've both been this happy, at once?"

Cece turns around and shrugs, biting the inside of her cheek. She's thinking about The Nick Thing because she can't help it, she kind of feels bad for the guy. Jess is smiling at her all wide-eyed, and Jess is always beautiful, but when she's  _happy_... "When we were like, twelve, maybe," Cece says, and then she leans in and smooches Jess on the cheek the second there's a knock at the door. "Go! That's him! Don't do any of your weird voices, they're  _doctors_!"

"I'll try! Don't wait up for me! Bye!"

—

Cece never says 'I love you' first. Like, one time Kyle said, 'I love you', and Cece went, 'What? Take it back, dude.', and he did, and then she got mad that he  _did_ even though she _wanted him to_ , and no one's said 'I love you' to Cece since.

Jess's dinner with Sam runs way past midnight, and Cece kind of hates sleeping at the apartment alone, so Schmidt comes over despite the fact that he worked fourteen hours today. He wants to see her, and even though she keeps insisting that he doesn't have to, she secretly enjoys the fact that he's fighting her on it.

He comes at one in the morning with Mexican takeout and this paper bag with 'Cece' written on it in black Sharpie marker.

"Is there anything suspicious in there?", Cece asks, narrowing her eyes at the sketchy-looking paper bag Schmidt's holding up to her, and he just shakes his head. "Last time someone handed me a paper bag with 'Cece' written on it, there was a pet guinea pig in it. I was  _not_ prepared, to say the least."

Schmidt wrinkles his nose. "Who do you  _hang out with_?", he asks, and then he shakes his head. "It's a present, I just didn't have time to wrap it."

Cece opens up the paper bag slowly, and then she pulls out this no-name brand of perfume from it and she's confused. She flips it around and reads the label. "Why does it say 'Cecelia No. 5'?"

"I had it made. Place downtown. I don't know... One time we were laying in bed and you were going on and on about how the most thoughtful thing a guy has bought you in the past ten years was a custom pizza --"

"He remembered the pineapple, so..."

"Pineapple. I'll remember that."

"Schmidt." She's shaking her head at him, and she wants to say so much more than  _his name_ , but she's not good at this kind of stuff.

"Cece, I know you don't trust guys, and I don't know why you trust  _me_ , because I'm kind of an asshole who once dumped a girl because she was highly allergic to my favorite flower, but --"

"I love you, okay?", she says, almost too fast for Schmidt to hear it. He does, though, he hears it and raises an eyebrow at her, and the corners of his lips fold into a soft smile. 

Without even thinking about it, he says, "I love you too, Cece" so easily, and then they forget about the Mexican takeout and they can't even make it to the bedroom before they're undressing each other.

"Wait. Wait. What -- What if Jess walks in while we're doin' it on the couch?", Schmidt asks mid-kiss, and Cece pulls herself off of him to laugh, her shirt halfway over her head.

"It wouldn't be the worst thing she's walked into," she says nonchalantly, and then the two of them push Jess's quilts off of the couch and onto the floor and Cece has The Best Sex Of Her Life.

—

The dinner is... 

Jess uses the word 'incomplete' when she thinks about the best way to describe it. Something's missing when she's with Sam, but she can't put her finger on it. Was it the fact that he fist-bumped her when their table got called up to the buffet? Was it the fact that he spent a solid thirty minutes texting during one surgeon's riveting speech? (Jess cried. Sam was too busy checking his e-mail.)

It's two-thirty in the morning when Sam walks her to the door of her apartment, and Jess leans against it. "Goodnight, Sam. Thank you for -- Thank you for tonight," she says, even though she wants to go groan into her pillow and yell about how that'll be the last time she hangs out in a room full of doctors for seven hours.

"'Night, Jess," Sam says, and then he leans in and kisses her slowly, sucking on her top lip before he pulls away. "I'll call you in the morning?"

"You don't -- I don't -- Yeah."

Sam shoves his hands in his pockets and winks at her. "Thanks for coming. I know it was boring."

 _Duh. You texted through the whole thing._ "It was fine. Fun!  _Fun_. The food was..." Dry? Bland? Who serves cheap chicken at a  _doctor's dinner_? "Goodnight, Sam."

She leans up against her apartment door and waits until Sam reaches the elevator to pull her phone out from her pocket. She quickly dials the first person she thinks about, the person she briefly thought about at the dinner when she went to do her Daffy Duck impression and knew Sam wouldn't listen to it without judging her --  _hard_.

"Whoa. Hello? What time is it?"

"Like..." Jess pulls her phone away from her ear and checks the time, and then she yells, "Oh my God. I'm sorry!" into the phone.

"It's almost  _three_? What's -- Is it an emergency, Jess?"

"Kind of," she lies.  _Exaggerates_. Whatever. She can hear Cece and Schmidt behind the door, and they're definitely not asleep. "Cece's... busy, and I need someone to talk to."

"At three in the morning."

"Nick, I need you, okay? You're easy to talk to, and you're my friend, and -- I'm sorry."

He sighs on the other end of the phone for what feels like a decade to her, but then he says, "You don't need to be sorry, Jess. Come over."

—

He makes her this organic herbal tea bullshit. It's Schmidt's, and he has no idea how to brew it until Jess shows him.

She's on her third cup, and Nick is wide awake listening to her, trying his best not to visibly cringe at every mention of Sam's name. (Even though he has no right to be pissed. Even though Sam is probably a good dude with good intentions. Even though he sucks at saying how he feels and should've told her how on his mind she is before there was even a Sam.)

"It's like... He's great, but there's something missing, and I have no idea what it is. Am I being picky?"

Nick pulls up the blanket he's covered up in and shakes his head at her. "Someone as awesome as you is allowed to be picky, Jess."

She doesn't think that statement is accurate, or fair, or... "Thanks, Nick," she says, biting down on her lip. "Hey, is fist-bumping romantic?"

He laughs and goes, "In what context?"

"No context. Just... fist-bumping. I think he called me 'dude' at one point in the night, too, but I don't know, 'dude' is better than like, 'bro', right?"

Nick squints and makes a mental list of everything he'd like to call Jess, and then he casually asks, "Is everything else he does good?"

"I mean, he's a  _great_ kisser, if that's what you're asking," she says almost proudly.

"Um... I wasn't, but... good to know."

Jess is a good People Reader. In the fourth grade, Jessica P.'s rabbit died, and Jess knew before she even cried about it at recess. She could sniff the tears coming from a mile away. 

Nick looks pissed off, -- or no,  _disappointed_. Jess thinks she needs to stop rambling on about Sam right about now, and the thought of Nick liking her wasn't a thing until three seconds ago, but now she's looking at his face and thinking about it and she feels like hell.

"I'm sorry, Nick," she says, lifting herself up off of the couch and putting her organic herbal tea down on one of the coasters. Imagine: Breaking Nick's heart  _and_ leaving a ring of organic herbal tea on his coffee table. Ouch.

"For what, Jess?", he asks, clearly confused.

She clears her throat and looks at him, really looks at him. She thinks about how much she could love someone like Nick for a second -- someone even more broken than she is, someone who stays up with her until three, four in the morning letting her drink organic herbal tea on his couch as she rants to him about someone who fist-bumps her but kisses her like a dream. She likes Nick, and whatever she has with him, whatever  _this_ is, and --

"If I'm acting too comfortable around you, I'll stop," she says. Nick just shakes his head and asks what the hell she means by that. "I feel like we're friends. Good friends. But I also don't want to hurt you, because I like you a lot and sometimes I don't know how to shut up."

"Jess..."

"I thought about Winston setting us all up -- You and Cece, me and Schmidt. He got it wrong, Nick, but I wish I knew before... before  _Sam_."

Nick swallows thickly, and Jess knows he's thinking the same thing. "Yeah," he says coldly. "Winston sucks."

"No! Okay, Winston's the best, and he's  _so_ good at being a fiancé and he's so good at being in love, but he got it all wrong. If he set me up with you, Nick, it would've worked, right from the beginning, but he didn't and we're not Schmidt and Cece so we didn't secretly get it on behind everyone's back."

"To be fair," Nick says, raising his index finger, "I think they waited to get it on, but, yeah."

Jess doesn't say anything, she just squeezes her eyes shut and shakes her head and her stomach starts to hurt.

"I've been dying to kiss ya', Jess," Nick admits out of nowhere. Okay, not  _out of_ _nowhere_ , because they're  _here_ talking about  _this_ , and Jess thinks Nick is handsome and smart and he'd probably let her do her Daffy Duck impression for the rest of their lives, even if it annoyed him. 

"I can't... I don't... I'm not a  _cheater_ , Nick."

"You said Sam spent the entire dinner texting underneath the table, Jess."

"Yeah, it was probably a patient! Or -- Or his mom. Guys text their moms, you know!"

"Yeah, I'd text my mom if she didn't own a cell phone from like, 1984, but she does. And guys don't text their moms, _Jessica_."

Jess knows he's right, but she's also  _Jess_ , and she doesn't surrender easily. "I don't think...", she starts, and it pisses her off to say it, "I don't think Sam is looking for something as serious as I'm looking for."

Nick bites the inside of his cheek and steps closer to Jess, three steps forward, his hands in the pockets of his plaid pajama pants. "What are you looking for, Jess? Besides all of those hopes and dreams you told me about when we were drunk on that toilet at Winston's bachelor party, what are you looking for?"

"You remember my drunken hopes and dreams?", she asks him, surprised. 

"Most of 'em," he says with a nod. "I think you have a lot more, though."

—

Nick makes Jess two more cups of organic herbal tea, and then he sends her home with the box because, "Whatever, Schmidt has enough, he won't even know they're gone."

Jess shoves the box of tea into her purse, and then she hugs him goodbye. "I'm sorry I poured all of that out on you, Nick. I made you get deep at four in the morning."

"Jessica, you could make me get deep any hour of the day," he says teasingly, and then he winks at her. It hits him how tired he is, how he should've been in bed hours ago but he'd stay up for her ten times over again.

"Goodnight, Nick."

"'Night, Jess."

She goes to leave his apartment, and then she gasps when he pulls her back in, tugging her by the wrist. "Wait," he says underneath his breath, and Jess drops her purse and the box of tea falls out right onto the floor and she doesn't even care about the stupid organic herbal tea right now.

He kisses her senseless.  _Senseless_. He pulls her in by the wrist and his hands fall to her waist, and she hasn't been held like this in forever. She hasn't been kissed like this in forever. He kisses her like he misses her, like he's been waiting years and years to plant one on her. Their lips fervently attach to each others', and after a few seconds, Jess finds herself cupping Nick's face, and she's every bit absorbed into this kiss as he is. He tastes like the organic herbal tea she made him take a sip of --  _Pleaseeeee, don't make me drink alone, Nick_ _!_ \-- and a little bit of familiarity, too. She called it from Day One that he knew how to kiss; when she told Cece he looked like a good kisser and Cece was all, "Do  _you_ wanna take a go at him, J?". 

He pulls away from her and gives her one last peck, his lip grazing her top lip. He breathes out and goes, "Jess...", just like that, and then she says his name back to him.

"Better than a fist-bump, huh?"

"Um. I. I should get going, Nick."

She grabs her purse off of the floor and races out of his apartment, sans the box of organic herbal tea, and then she sprints into the elevator and freaks out all the way until she gets to the first floor. 

She group texts Cece and Winston an:  **S-O FREAKIN' S!!!** and knows neither of them are going to answer her until at least ten, eleven A.M.

She keeps her car in park outside of Nick's apartment and touches her lips because they're still swollen and they taste like  _Nick_ and -- You. Just. Kissed. Nick. Miller. The way her heart drops to her stomach when she sits there and thinks about it must mean something, but she'll let Cece and Winston tell her  _what_.


	6. SIX.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Part 1/2 of Winston and Aly's wedding! 
> 
> \--
> 
> P.S. Thank you for all the love. I do my best to respond to every single comment, of course, but I just want to let you know here as well: Thank you for reading this fic, and for _liking it_ , and for every single nice thing you have to say about it. It never goes unappreciated, and it only makes me want to write more and more and more. 
> 
> If you're enjoying this fic -- be sure to leave me a review and let me know which parts you're enjoying/what you'd like to see next/yell at me about how much you love Jess and Nick and want them to get their sh*t together. OK. <3

**SIX**

"You S-O-S me the morning before my wedding because...?"

" _Because_ ," Jess says dramatically, burying her head in her coffee cup. "I screwed up, Winston. I screwed up _so_ bad."

Cece groans and lifts her croissant to her mouth, chomping into it. "Couldn't you have screwed up another day? I had  _so much sex_ last night. I'm sleepy."

"Congratulations, you two better have cleaned up my living room," Jess says snippily. "You guys. You guys! I cheated on Sam."

Now they're both paying attention.

"You cheated on my doctor, Jess?! Now he's gonna make me pay the co-pay. Screw you!"

"Whoa, okay, wait, I thought everything was going great with Sam," Cece says, waving off Winston with a hand. "What the hell happened?"

" _What happened_ ," Jess repeats, "is that I kissed Nick Miller six hours ago and now I want to die."

"WHAAAT?!"

"MY MAN, NICK!"

"Again: _WHAAAT?!_

"I knowwwww. He made me organic herbal tea -- which, I left at his apartment because I freaked out and sprinted out of there. He listened to me rant about Sam and the stupid way he fist-bumps me when he's happy. And then... And then Stupid Nick Miller... he kissed me."

Cece leans into Jess and holds up a finger to her, and then she goes, "Did Stupid Jessica Day like it?"

"Stupid Jessica Day  _loved it_! Like... Guys, Nick is  _such_ a good kisser. I hate myself. Uuuuugh." 

Winston rolls his eyes at her. "Nick's also The Most Fragile Person In Los Angeles, and you're also  _taken_. You're gonna hurt him, Jess."

"I knowwwww. I don't want to hurt your best friend, Winston, I really don't. He's so... so...  _Nick_."

"Well, you need to be honest with one of them. Or both of them. Just... Fix this mess, Jess, they're  _both_ going to be at our wedding tomorrow and Sam is your date and Nick is not."

Cece widens her eyes and drops her croissant onto her plate. "Oh shit. Jess! _Jess_!"

"Cece! I know. I know. I screwed up by letting Nick kiss me -- and  _liking it_. Damn it."

—

Jess called Cece the chicken before, but Jess Day? She's  _also_ a chicken.

She lets Sam come to the apartment the night before the wedding so she can try on her dress for him like nothing's wrong, like she  _didn't_ suck Nick Miller's face last night, like... like she isn't a terrible person for  _not_ hating it.

"Spin around in it!", he says with a laugh, and she does. (She's a sucker for dresses, and spinning around in them, and this bridesmaid dress makes her butt look  _great_.)

He kisses her on the bed after, and then he closes her bedroom door because Cece and Schmidt are watching TV in the living room, and he doesn't want to stop touching Jess. 

He makes her squirm when he slides his hand up and down her thigh, and then he mumbles, "T-Take it off, Jess."

Jess is about to -- she's about to slide right out of that dress and let Sam go to town between her legs, but then Nick's face appears in her mind and she jolts up, her eyes wide at Sam. "I can't," she says.

"Well, why not?", he asks, and he looks concerned, Puppy Dog Eyes right on Jess's. "Is it woman-stuff?"

"Ha. Woman-stuff. No! No, it's..." She stops to take a breath, and she's so nervous she's about to shake out of her skin. "If I tell you, you're going to hate me, and then Winston's wedding will be filled with this awkward tension between us, and  _no one_ deals with awkward tension worse than Winston! Do you want to do that to Winston?"

Sam looks confused for a second, and then he says, "...No..." all slowly. He grabs onto one of her knees and shakes it, and the touch of his hands on her skin makes her feel instantly guilty. 

"Sam." She clears her throat after she says his name. "I..."

"Jess, what, come on. You can tell me anything. We're... I mean, we're  _dating_ , aren't we?"

Aren't they. Ha. "Y-Yeah, we are, we -- Sam, I'm nervous because I haven't had sex in awhile, that's all."

Nice save, you idiot. It's been a little bit, but not  _awhile_ , and -- "That's all," she repeats, because she's a Certified Mess and she's suddenly bad at telling the truth.

"Well hey, we can go slow, okay?" He reaches a hand out and ruffles the top of her hair like she's some  _pet_ , and then he says, "I'm not here to pressure you. I like you."

"I-I like you too," she says, and she feels like she's lying to him. "I'm sorry I'm acting so weird."

"Hey, it's only weird when you call it 'weird'. Come here."

She inches in and lets Sam kiss her for a minute, and when they're done, Jess stands up and shoos him out of her room so she can change.

—

Winston's at the guys' apartment to make sure their tuxes are okay, and also because he's a Nervous Wreck and he doesn't know how to deal with the whole I'm Getting Married Tomorrow thing. (Not without a few beers, or his guy friends telling him what a 'ten' Aly is -- "She deals with your freakin' cat. She's a keeper, obviously!").

Schmidt fixes Winston's tie, and then he says, "See? Much better. I'd do you in that, Winnie."

"Shut up, man. Wait. Really? I look that good?"

Schmidt snickers. "I don't lie about tuxes, Winston. A suit? Maybe I'd tell you that you look good in a suit even if you didn't, but this tux is serious biz', bro."

Nick's pacing around their kitchen eating granola by the handful, and Schmidt stops playing with Winston's collar to go, "Excuse me, what is this? Did you take my Xanax today, Nicholas?"

"Huh?" He drops the granola he's fisting back into the bag, and then he sits down at the counter on one of the barstools. "Do you remember the last time I took one of your Xanax, Schmidty? I went up to the roof with no clothes on because I thought I could fly out of Los Angeles. This isn't Xanax-panicking, my man."

Winston's fully aware of why Nick's panicking -- and eating granola by the bagful. "Dude, maybe you shouldn't have kissed her."

"Kissed -- Kissed who?", Schmidt asks, and now  _he's_  the one panicking. "If it was Cece, if you're talking about Cece, I'll -- I'll take you up to the roof and feed you to the birds, man! I'll just... l'll feed you to the damn birds and leave your bones up there. That stupid cat can nibble on them."

"It wasn't  _Cece_ , you idiot. Cece's been with you all day."

"Then who was it? Was it Beth from my office? She's bad news, man, stay away. I know she has hot knees, but have you seen her janky elbow?"

Nick sighs and drops the bag of granola he's holding onto the counter. He puffs out his cheeks and looks at Winston as if he needs permission to spill the beans. Winston says, "Just tell him, man", so Nick goes, "It was Jess, okay?"

"You... You kissed  _Jess_? Are you serious?"

"I did, yeah, I kissed --"

"She has a boyfriend, you ninny!"

"I'm not a ninny, you're a ninny for usin' a word as dumb as 'ninny'. Schmidt, I'm obviously aware of the fact that Jess has a boyfriend; thanks for the reminder."

Schmidt reaches out and shakes Nick by the shoulder. "Oh, no problem, bro! I got your back."

"Look, I know it was a mistake, but -- but she kissed me back!", he shouts, throwing his hands up in defense. In that moment, he's trying  _super_ hard not to think about Jess's lips on his, or the way she let him take charge and slide his hands up and down her backside, or the way she said, "Nick..." all low when they were finished.

"And how did it feel? Good, or like a  _betrayal_? You betrayed Winston's doctor, Nick! Now he's gonna have to pay the co-pay every time!"

"That's what I said, man!", Winston yells, leveling a hand at Nick. "Way to go, Miller."

"I'll -- I'll tell him, okay? It's my fault; I kissed her first, she just did the polite thing and kissed me back. I'll tell Sam and then I'll stop pining after Jess, because I know it's never gonna happen."

"Wait until after the wedding, yeah?", asks Winston, and Schmidt agrees. "If anything goes wrong tomorrow, Aly says I owe her dad four-hundred-thousand dollars."

"Is that -- That's how much weddings cost?", Nick asks, dumbfounded.

Schmidt goes, "Well,  _my_ wedding might near a million bucks, but that's because I'm copying many of Kanye's visions."

"Paris, man? Nice." Winston fist-bumps Schmidt, and Nick just rolls his eyes. He hates the damn Kardashians, and he hates Schmidt even more.

"Well then, I'm getting married at the bar and I'm serving chicken tenders and fries as the main course. Drinks are free," Nick boasts.

"Beautiful," says Schmidt.

"Yeah, can't wait to attend  _that one_ , man," says Winston. "Look, I'm proud of you, man. You're owning up to your mistake, which is what I  _wish_ you would've done when we were kids and you stole Cindy de la Garza from me in the eighth grade, but... Just pretend nothing happened -- no kiss, no you-and-Jess -- until after my damn wedding. We clear?"

"What if Jess already told him, though? Like, she's  _Jess_. She's honest and braver than I am. She probably told him."

"Well then, we let Jess worry about that," Winston says, and then he spends the rest of the night freaking out over his tie and Aly and  _not_ freaking out over Nick and Jess.

—

Winston and Aly are getting married in this beautiful spot. It's the first floor of this fancy place called The Lisbon, because Aly's family has money and she and Winston don't do too bad themselves. 

"I get chills just stepping foot in here," says Schmidt, and then he talks about how The Lisbon is Number One on a list of over 100 of his dream wedding venues. Cece's on his arm telling him to shut up, that his day will come, to stop calling the ceilings in this place orgasm-worthy.

Jess is next to them with Sam, her fingers looped with his. She likes holding his hand in public because he's handsome and he's tall and fine, she feels like she's in a Taylor Swift music video whenever she stands next to him. He's so handsome.

Nick is there, too, but he's kind of off to the side because he's date-less, so he's just pretending Jess isn't there and flipping through the menu. "I should get the salmon, right?", he asks, holding up the menu to his friends' views.

Jess lets go of Sam's hand and steps forward, clearing her throat before she reaches Nick. Sam and Cece and Schmidt all look confused, and Nick just looks up at her with a raised eyebrow.

"Um." She swallows thickly. "Can we talk for a second, Miller?"

"Sure,  _Day_ ," he mocks, shoving his hands into the pockets of his suit and following her to this corridor with a staircase and a window seat. They're the only two people in this part of The Lisbon. 

"This is _so_ weird," Jess starts, and she shoots these apologetic eyes at Nick, because she really is sorry. 

"Well, yeah, I mean. You told him we kissed and he's still here. He's gotta be pretty awesome."

"Nick, I -- Woo. Okay. How do I put this?" She shakes her head and her cheeks get all hot, and Nick asks her if she wants him to fan her off. "What? No! I'm fine, I -- Okay, I'm not fine. I didn't exactly mention the fact that we kissed to Sam at all, and I'm not going to."

Nick feels his stomach drop, and then he nods, because he gets it. "You don't wanna mess anything up, I get it."

"I just... I don't think it mattered, that much," Jess says, and then she instantly regrets it when she sees how red Nick's cheeks get. "I mean, it didn't -- It didn't  _mean anything_. It was just a kiss. It happened, and now it's over."

"I -- Okay."

"Okay?"

"Well, you don't think it meant anything, so fine, it didn't mean anything. Can I go now, or do you wanna torture me some more?"

Jess hangs her head and plays with her hands, and then she lets out a soft, "Nick..."

"Jess," he says, "it's fine. I just -- The way you kissed me back, I thought it meant a little more than 'nothing'."

"Maybe to  _you_ ," she argues back, and now she feels herself getting frustrated. All she meant to do was apologize for being weird, and she might've asked him to be friends, or something. 

"Maybe to me  _and_ you," he retorts. "Why are you so afraid, Jess?"

"Ha. Afraid. Of who,  _you_? You don't scare me, Nick Miller," she insists, shaking her head.

"I don't, but the fact that you felt something when you kissed me might've," he says smugly, and Jess just stays quiet. "Tell me this: If it didn't mean anything, then why the hell can't you tell Sam about it?"

Jess bites down on her lip and tells him that she can't answer that.

"Of course you can't," he says pointedly. "I'll see you in there, Jess."

—

"Winston," Aly says, and she tries to catch her breath. There's tears pooling in her eyes, and in Winston's eyes, and Jess is a second away from crying, too.

She looks next to her, to Sam, to the way his thumb is stroking her knuckles. It's pissing her off that she doesn't  _feel_ anything; that nothing is electric or exciting or romantic about being in the most romantic room in Los Angeles with him right now. 

"You're everything to me, Winston," says Aly, clearing her throat. Winston reaches out his hand to stroke hers, and just looking at them touching each other feels more electric, exciting, _romantic_  to Jess than Sam touching her has ever felt. 

"I like that you keep a box of weird things in our bedroom -- your Pure Moods CD, an autographed picture of you and Dave Coulier, your collection of yogurt tops. I like everything about you, Winston, and some people -- Some people love each other, but they don't like each other. I like you because you make me laugh, and --" Aly breathes out and lifts a hand up to wipe a tear from underneath her eye. "Damn it. You know I'm no good at this stuff," she whispers.

"Then let me," says Winston, grabbing onto both of her hands and giving them a squeeze. "Aly, when we first met, I told you, "Don't go falling in love with me", and now... well... we're here."

They go on for a few more minutes about how much they love each other, and Aly says, "I love you so much I let your flea-infested cat sleep in our bed", and then they exchange rings and kiss like Jess has never seen two people kiss before, and everyone in the room stands up and claps and cheers.

"Introducing... Mr. and Mrs. Winston and Aly Bishop!"

"Keepin' my last name, actually!", Aly yells out, and then she grabs Winston's hand and he leads her down the altar.

When they leave as Mr. and Mrs. Winston and Aly Bishop -- Uh, Aly Not-Bishop*, -- Jess smiles across her pew and meets Nick's eyes.

He looks down the second he finds Jess's face in the crowd, and Jess ignores the way her heart drops down to her stomach and loops her arm through Sam's.

—

Nick spends the beginning of the reception dancing with one of Aly's bridesmaids, Reagan. She's beautiful, and she moves a lot better than him but still doesn't seem to mind how bad he is, and they're a little tipsy so Nick lets her kiss him smack dab on the mouth a few times.

Jess watches them from her spot on the dance floor, and not even the way Sam wraps his arms around her and pulls her closer when "The Way You Look Tonight" plays makes her feel any better about watching Nick tongue one of the bridesmaids he's probably only said two words to in his entire life.

"Ceec. Cece, Cece, Cece!", Jess shouts, and she lets go of Sam and watches him clumsily trip over his own feet. (He was in a rhythm there, for a second.)

Cece slides her hands down Schmidt's shoulders and widens her eyes. "Jess? Jess, what's wrong? Are you drunk already? I told you, take it slow."

Jess shakes her head fervently and grabs Cece by the hand, intertwining their fingers. "Schmidt, I'm stealing your girl for a second. Go distract Sam."

"What?! By dancing with him to a romantic Frank Sinatra song? No chance, Jessica, Frank Sinatra is _serious_ ," Schmidt says, rejecting her idea and making his way over to the bar.

"Jess, what's going on? You're not Aly's Maid of Honor -- no speech, no pressure, no responsibilities. Just _dance_ , okay?"

"Cece, I can't -- I -- I'm watching Nick sloppily make out with Reagan and I want to die," she says, and then she apologizes for being dramatic. "Whoa, okay, I don't want to  _die_ , but I'd rather be watching anything else, like... like my sister Abby's live water birth video she put on YouTube. It's  _that_ bad."

Cece sighs and pulls Jess in close. "Is this for real, Jess?", she asks her. "I thought you told him it meant nothing."

"It  _does_.  _Did_. Cece." Jess starts to tear then, right in the corner of the dance floor, and Cece reaches over and pulls one of the napkins off from the table and swipes it underneath Jess's eyes so her mascara doesn't get all screwed up. "Cece, I think I like Nick, but I have no idea what to do about it; what to do about  _Sam_."

"Can you just... Okay, can you figure it out like,  _not_ in the middle of the dance floor at one of our best friend's weddings?"

Jess lets out a deep breath and squeezes her eyes shut, and then she goes, "I have to fix this right now, Cece."

"Oh no. No, no, no you don't, Jessica! Okay, sit down, eat something from the chocolate fountain, drink some bubbly, just --"

"I'm going," Jess says, in her very Determined Jessica Day state, and then she stomps away from Cece and goes off to find Sam.

—

"SAM, WAIT! JUST LET ME --  _SAM_!"

Nick pulls away from Reagan in the middle of a song, and he races to the hallway right after Jess races out.

"Oh,  _oh_ , what the hell is  _he_ doing here?", Sam asks, pointing a finger accusingly at Nick. 

"Wh -- Nick!", Jess shouts, rolling her eyes at him. "Why are you out here?"

"Sam, if you're running away from her because -- because of  _me_ , then just know it wasn't Jess's fault."

Sam lets out a huff and laughs sarcastically. "Yeah, of course you have her back, because you  _like her_."

"Well..." Nick rolls up the sleeves of his dress shirt and starts to sweat profusely, and if Jess weren't so focused on being frustrated at this whole situation, she'd be heavily grossed out, because  _ew_. "Sam, I kissed her, okay? She didn't kiss me back. She actually ran away. She's not -- She's not a cheater, dude."

Jess shakes her head and feels her chest get heavy. "Um... Sam?"

"Jess, haven't you said enough?", Sam asks, holding up a finger at her to shush her. "I don't know if I can deal with all of this. Like, okay, we weren't  _serious_ , but we could've been. I wasn't going around kissing any of my friends and acting cool about it!"

"I wasn't 'acting cool', I was freaking out! Sam, you don't -- you don't think I feel bad about this?", she asks, tears pooling in her eyes. She's not good at all of this. She's never really hurt anybody before.

"If  _he_ kissed  _you_ , then just say that's what happened. Tell me it didn't mean anything to you, and I'll  _consider_ forgiving you."

"Sam, I can't... I can't do that," she says honestly, her voice cracking. Sam laughs sarcastically again, and then he shoves his hands into his pockets and says, "I'm out of here."

"Come on, don't -- Don't leave Winston's wedding. You're his favorite doctor! You helped him when he got that cranberry stuck in his ear at that Christmas party in 2012, don't you remember?"

Sam puffs out his cheeks and looks at Jess, then at Nick, then at Jess again. "I hope you two figure this out," he says, smacking his lips together. "Bye, Jess."

—

"What the hell is going on out here?", Winston asks, popping his head out of the doors to the reception and into the hallway. Aly sneaks up behind him and loops an arm through his, and then she asks, "Did Winston's doctor just stomp out of our wedding, or am I already drunk?"

"Jess decided to tell Sam about the little kiss we shared the other night  _right now_. At your wedding. Way to go, Jess."

Jess rolls her eyes and watches Nick walk toward the doors to the reception, and then she races over to him and grabs him by the wrist. "Hey. You kissed me, Miller. I just returned the kiss."

" _Happily_ ," he says smugly, and then he shakes Jess's hand off of his arm.

"And he  _left_?", Aly asks, shaking her head. "Guys! You're both a mess. Just messes. What the hell."

"I've been sayin'!", Winston says, turning to his bride. He pecks her on the mouth and tells her to go back inside. "Your song is on, baby. I'll be right there."

Aly shrugs and looks at Jess and Nick. "I hope you know how upset Winston is about his doctor leaving the wedding. He doesn't even like him that much, but now he's  _definitely_ gonna have to pay the co-pay every time he goes."

"Told y'all!", yells Winston, turning to Jess and Nick with his arms folded at his chest. "Look, whatever is going on between you guys, just... figure it out, okay?"

Jess salutes Winston, and Nick just stands there silently. 

"Miller," she says through gritted teeth. "I'm sorry I told him."

"Yeah, are you though?", he asks, rolling his eyes at her. " _Now_ it means something to you, all of a sudden?"

"Nick, I know you don't believe me, but it -- it meant something before, I just didn't know how to tell you it did."

"Well. Do you know how to tell me now that you chased Dr. Sam out of here? He's going to put a hex on both of us, you know."

"Um." Jess narrows her eyes at Nick. "He's a doctor, not a warlock. What's wrong with you?"

"Oh, I don't know, I've just been freaking out for the past forty-eight hours. What about you, Jessica, huh?"

"Nick, it meant more to you than it did to me and you know it!", she says, pointing at Nick accusingly.

He gets flushed in the face and starts to walk backwards, and Jess is like, "Wait, is  _Thriller_ playing? Why are you doing the moonwalk?"

"The -- I'm not --  _You're_ doing the moonwalk!", Nick yells, and then he starts to moonwalk right back into the reception and lets the doors close before Jess can wiggle herself back inside.

"DO NOT MOONWALK AWAY FROM ME, MILLER! DO. NOT."

—

"Nick, your Best Man speech is in five minutes," Winston warns him mid-moonwalk. "Are you too drunk to do it?"

"I actually know  _just_ what to say," he says, and then he takes the paper his speech is written on right out of the pocket of his tuxedo jacket and crumbles it up, throwing it onto the floor. "Not going to need that, so..."

"Oh God. What do you have planned? Schmidt, come get Nick, he's about to bomb his speech!"

"I'm actually going to  _bomb it_. Oh wait. That's what you said. Winnie, I love you, now get _ready_ , son."


	7. SEVEN.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Part 2/2 of Winston and Aly's wedding!

**SEVEN.**

On paper, Nick's Best Man Speech was nice. It really was.  
  
"Kind of endearing, even," says Aly, and then she crumbles it back up again and tosses it back onto the floor. "Winston, whatever speech Nick is about to give, it can't happen."

Winston looks onto his Best Man with wide eyes, his head shaking, and he mouths, 'DON'T MESS UP MY WEDDING' to Nick, but Nick is too drunk so he ignores Winston and grabs the microphone and snatches a champagne glass right out of Winston's little sister's hands.

"Hello, wedding people!", he yells.

"Great, this is going to go wonderfully...", Schmidt whispers.

"Are his eyes even open?", asks Cece.

"I hope you are all enjoying -- enjoying the festivities," he slurs, and then he clinks his champagne glass obnoxiously and everyone cringes because it's definitely not time to clink his champagne glass that hard, or at all. "Winston, Aly: Congratulations, you sons of bitches! Most couples get divorced within four to six years of marriage. Look it up. I hope you guys can wait at least seven! Anyway, love ya'."

"Not too shabby, not too shabby," Schmidt says, and Winston's all, "Are we listening to the same speech, man?"  
  
"This is _your_ _doing_ , Jess," Cece says, grabbing onto her best friend by the wrist. "If you hadn't told Sam about the kiss, this whole mess wouldn't be happening right now."

Jess nods and feels her cheeks get hot. "Uh huh. My doing. Got it, Cece."  
  
" _Here_ ," Nick starts after a ten-second pause of just him looking at the DJ and smiling oddly, "starts my real speech. Jessica Day, are you present?"

Cece and Schmidt and Winston simultaneously go, "Oh God", and then Aly lifts up the train of her dress and races to where Nick's standing, attempting to grab the microphone from him.

"Give it to me, Miller! My wedding, my rules."

"You're a shrimp, you'll never -- Aw, son of a bitch, you got the mic."

Aly wiggles the microphone in her hand and then brings it up to her mouth, looking onto all of her guests. "Sorry about that, guys. If you have any requests for a song, don't hesitate to hound our DJ! Unless it's Nicki Minaj. Take that shit to the club."

Nick smiles and attempts to drunkenly walk away from the front of the dance floor, until Aly grabs him by the arm and tugs him toward her.

"What the hell are you doing?! Whatever you were going to say to Jess can  _wait_."

"Aly, I'm drunk, I'm sorry!"

"Yeah? Go be drunk and sorry  _here_ ," she says through gritted teeth, and then she yells out, "Winston, you got Jess?".

Winston loops his arm through Jess's and tugs her to where Aly is standing with Nick. "Sure do," he says.

"You two can go sort this out somewhere that is  _not_ the dance floor of my wedding," she says, and then she and Winston drag Jess and Nick into the lobby.

"Oh, okay, this isn't too bad, I thought you were kicking us out," Nick says, shaking Aly off of him and turning around to hold a double thumbs-up at Winston. 

"Oh, we're  _totally_ kicking you out," Winston says, and right as Jess goes to yell at him in protest, he points to the unused photo booth in the corner of the lobby. 

"You want us to solve our issues  _in there_?", Jess questions, and Winston just says, "Uh huh" and tugs her forward. "Wait! I have to pee first."

"Too damn bad. Go in that photo booth, close the curtain --"

" _Don't_ do each other!", Aly interrupts.

"Yeah, don't do each other, you rascals. Talk it out and don't come back to our wedding until Sir Toasts A Lot is sober enough to give his  _real_ Best Man speech."

Jess goes to yell at Winston in protest (again), but before she can, he and Aly shove Jess and Nick right into the photo booth and close the curtains.

"You two will thank us later," Aly says, clapping her hands together and then intertwining them in Winston's. "Hurry, let's go back! I hear a Michael Bublé song and you'll divorce me if we miss it."

—

Aly and Winston reenter their own wedding before the chorus of Michael Bublé's  _Close Your Eyes_ , and Cece and Schmidt stop dancing to race up to them.

"You kicked them out?"!, Cece asks in a panic. 

"Nicholas was my ride!", Schmidt exclaims.

"Relax, they're still here," Aly says. "They're just... not here."

"I have no idea what that means," says Cece.

"Ditto," Schmidt says.

Aly sighs. " _It means_ we trapped them in that photo booth outside and told them they couldn't come out until they solved whatever needs to be solved."

"You can't trap Jess in a photo booth, she's claustrophobic!", Cece yells.

Schmidt looks concerned too, and then he goes, "Nicholas is afraid of flash! Does the camera flash? Aly, tell me the camera doesn't flash!"

"Oh my God, stop babying them," she says, rolling her eyes. She likes Jess, and she likes Nick, but she'll be  _damned_ if one more drunken speech gets slurred at her wedding. 

—

"So..."

"So."

"Do you think this thing has any cool built-in features?"

Nick snickers. "Yeah, my kitchen is on the left and my bathroom -- complete with a jacuzzi tub -- is the thing you're in right now."

"Sweet," Jess says, laughing under her breath like she's not mad at him for kissing her and being the reason her boyfriend (?) ran out of Aly and Winston's wedding, and  _God_ , that drunken speech.

"Jess," he says, tipsiness in his voice, "I'm sorry I called you out like that. I was angry."

"That makes two of us," she says, playing with the fabric on her dress and looking down. It's easier than looking at Nick.

"I'm kind of mad that Sam left, but I have no right to be," Jess says after a minute goes by. She watches Nick presses his mouth together, but he doesn't say anything back, just nods at her and plays with his hands in his lap. "I mean, I kissed someone --  _you_."

"It was me, I was there," he says teasingly, and Jess smacks him on the forearm. "Sorry, Jess."

"I'm a mess!", she yells out, and Nick looks all around the perimeter of the photo booth and goes, "Sorry, I'm just trying to find you a napkin, you said --"

"Oh my God. I didn't mean that kind of mess, Nick. I mean... What am I  _doing_ , you know? Am I self-sabatoging myself? Am I afraid of being happy, so every time I get  _this_ close, I just -- I just screw it up?"

Nick waves his hands in front of his face and squints his eyes, and then he goes on about how he's too drunk to possibly get deep with her right now.

"Nick," she says, strain in her voice, "do you think we'd be happy together?"

He looks at her in a way that doesn't make it too obvious she's all he thinks about, and then he rubs his lips together and goes, "Probably, yeah."

"I want love, you know."

His eyes widen, and then without even thinking about it, he puts a hand on her leg. "Me too."

"When we sat on the toilet together at Winston's bachelor party, I thought -- Never mind."

"No, say it," he presses her. "Say it or I will."

"I -- Wait, what?"

He clears his throat, and then he inches into her -- as if they weren't sitting close enough. This photo booth is  _tiny_. "Jessica, every time I look at you, I'm always thinking that; that I'd wanna know what being with you is like, I guess."

"You do," she says, more of a statement than a question. 

"Well... yeah. When Winston set you up with Schmidt, I was pissed," he says.

"You didn't even know who I was," she says, and she's right. Winston's mentioned Jess in passing to him -- "My friend Jess and I are going to a Yarn Class at Michael's Craft Store today", or "My friend Jess and I baked  _the sickest_ scones last night, you want some?", -- but he never  _mentioned_ mentioned Jess, not like that. 

"Okay, that's true, but once I did..."

She gets what he's saying. She did, too. "Nick," she says once more, swallowing thickly.

He says her name too, and then he scoots in even closer to her, and both of them are cupping each other's face, doing exactly what Aly told them not to do in this photo booth.

Jess kisses him first, this time, and it's even better than the first time. (Probably because they're drunk, in a photo booth, at a wedding, etcetera, etcetera.)

It feels better than it should feel, kissing Nick, and maybe it's the tipsiness, but Jess has been waiting for these kinds of kisses for forever. It feels energetic and real and  _good_ , and the way Nick licks his lips when they pull away from each other tells her he thinks the same.

Jess runs a finger over her mouth and scoots away from Nick, and then she shakes her head. "Should we have done that?"

"I don't know," Nick says, shrugging. "You gonna text Sam and describe it to him in vigorous detail?"

She lets the corners of her lip curl, and then she kisses him again. This time, it's with a little more force, and she shifts herself on his lap so that his hand is on her butt. She swears she hears him moan her name under his breath, and then she lets her lips linger on his jawline, then on his neck. Nick's hand goes further and further up her dress, and she doesn't hate it.

—

Winston set the rule in place when he booked the honeymoon. Hawaii, seven days, he and Aly on an island in a resort with  _no phones_. Well. "Emergencies only, Day. Cece, tell her I mean it when I say 'emergencies only'. She can't need me this much."

"Hi Winston," she says with regret, because she's  _so sorry_ she's calling him right now at... "What time is it in Hawaii right now anyway?"

He sighs into the phone. "It's not any time in Hawaii because we're stuck at the damn airport. Wedding hangovers. We missed our first flight, and Aly is spending her first day as my wife cursing out an airport employee who's giving us trouble. What's up, J?"

She rolls over and looks at her alarm clock, only to see no alarm clock. She fell asleep on the couch, and there's blankets on top of her and a glass of water by the side table with a little note underneath it, probably just like all the drunken notes Cece's ever written to Jess before. She'll read it after she's done talking to Winston. 

"I... kissed Nick at your wedding," she says, clearly embarrassed. She throws a hand up and smacks her forehead while she waits for Winston to answer. "Winston?"

"You called me to tell me you sucked my friend's face in a photo booth? Jess, I knew," he says, and then he goes, "I'm rolling my eyes on the other end, B-T-W, but there's no way for you to know that, so I'm telling you."

"Right, thank you for -- Wait. You knew? How?!"

"Photo booths take pictures, you idiot," he says. "Aly found three sheets of you two just... going to town."

"We didn't 'go to town'," she says in annoyance. "We kissed. For a few seconds."

"Tell that to the picture we have of Nick's hand up your dress," Winston says with a snicker.

"Burn it! Burn it  _right now_."

"It's going up on our fridge, girl."

"I'm hanging up!", Jess threatens.

"Good, I didn't even want you to call me, my ass belongs in  _Hawaii_ avoiding all of the Jess-Drama for seven days."

"I can deal with my own Jess-Drama, Winston."

"Can you, though?", he questions, clearly making fun of her.

"No, absolutely not. Cece and Schmidt will help me, as soon as they wake up. Do you know they tucked me in on the couch and left me water and a note? I must've been more wasted than the time I drank at Melissa and Sadie's Baby Shower. I chugged vodka out of a baby's bottle for three hours."

Winston laughs at the memory -- and the photo album of pictures on Facebook, and then he stops. "Wait, Cece and Schmidt left you water and a note? No, they didn't, Jess."

"Um, I'm looking at it right now, Winston, yes they did. They're like my parents, only they support most of my bad decisions anyway and wait until some time passes to yell at me about them."

"Cece and Schmidt stayed in a hotel last night, Jess," Winston says. "They wanted to do something romantic. I think Aly and I gave them Wedding Fever."

Jess freaks out for a second, and then she remembers she's talking to Winston. (He's wrong -- a lot.) "Um. I gotta go, Winston. Safe flight. Tell Aly."

She hangs up her phone and throws it on top of the pile of blankets she's covered in, and then she reaches around the side table for her glasses. Once she finds them, she grabs the note so harshly underneath the glass that the water tips all over the place, but she doesn't even care. Cece might freak about it staining her rug, but whatever. "Cece! Schmidt! You guys!", she yells out before she reads the note, because  _Who. Wrote. The. Damn. Note_.? She's almost scared to find out.

She pushes her glasses up the bridge of her nose, and then she lets out this little gasp.

**Jess,**

**Tucked you in last night. You were really drunk. Nothing happened, but you did say, "I wanna have sex with you!" to me really loud on the elevator ride up. I'm sleeping in your bed because I tried to carry you there first but you said you like couches. There's water and two Motrin on the side table. Don't knock them over.**

**Nick**


	8. EIGHT.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We did it! The last chapter of "We Could Both Be Stars"!
> 
> Ultimately, I wanted it to be longer, but I also hate dragging stories on after I kind of cover everything I want to cover in them, so I figured it'd be best to end it here.
> 
> Thank you for joining me as this little baby came to life, and I hope you'll stick around to read whatever else I write, multi-chap (ha, not likely!) or not.

**EIGHT.**

Jess tiptoes into her bedroom and peeks in like a kid who thinks a monster is under their bed would peek underneath it. Her eyes bug out of their sockets when she finds a still-sleeping Nick Miller all wrapped up in her comforter, sprawled across her bed like it's his own.

"Nick...", she whispers, shutting the door behind her and stepping over toward her bed. Nick's note is still in her right hand, and before he can see what she's holding, she crumbles it up into a little ball and fists it. "Nick?"

"J-Jess," he murmurs, sitting up, still draped in Jess's comforter. "How's the hangover?"

"'How's the hangover?', Nick? That's all you have to say to me?"

He narrows his eyes at her and then goes, "I... Should I have said something else?"

She opens her fist and throws the note, still in a little ball, right at Nick. It bounces off of his chest and onto a pillow, and then he grabs it.

"I wrote that so you wouldn't wake up and freak out," he says. "Cece and Schmidt made me promise them I'd get you inside safe. The note was Cece's idea."

"I... I said that to you?", Jess asks, and it's clear Nick is actually, totally unsure about what she's referring to. "I said, "I wanna have sex with you!" to you, Nick?"

He rubs his chin and nods casually. "Yeah, that ya' did," he says. "You were drunk. No big. Unless..."

"Unless I actually want to have sex with you," Jess finishes, biting down on her lip, and Nick looks at her and goes, "Well, do you?"

"Nick! Don't ask me that. I'm still mad at you. You're the reason my boyfriend stormed out of Aly and Winston's wedding."

"Takes two to tango, Jessica," he says with a smirk, and she wants to smack that smirk right off of his stupid face. (If she weren't this hungover, she'd try.)

"Nick, I don't -- I don't  _know_ , okay? I don't know if I want to have sex with someone who -- You ruined my relationship!"

"Jess, was your relationship really 'a relationship' to begin with, though?", he asks, propped up against her pillows. Again: He's smirking, and she hates him.

She thinks back to all she's said about Sam to Nick; about the night with the organic herbal tea and the talking until four in the morning about how  _confused_ she was. She thinks about Nick Miller when he's not Ruining Her Life™, and she actually kind of likes him a lot.

Jess shakes her head slowly, and then she sits down on her bed. Nick scoots over for her, and she reaches over him to steal one of her pillows out from behind his head, placing it in her lap.

"I don't know how to be happy anymore, Nick," she says, and it kind of hurts something in her chest when she says it, but it's true.

"So stop tryin' so hard to be happy and just...  _be_ , Jess," he says after a second, reaching out and putting a hand to her knee.

—

Nick makes Jess eggs and pancakes and sets two little plates out on this tray he finds in her kitchen, because breakfast in bed is romantic and Nick is trying.

He's just about to steal one of the flowers from a vase in Jess and Cece's kitchen when there's a knock on the door. It's probably Cece and Schmidt, they're probably home early from their night at the hotel, but Nick is still embarrassed just thinking about the two of them finding him making a romantic breakfast for Jess.

"Just -- Just a second!", Nick yells at the door, frantically trying to clear off Jess's counter and set the tray down.

"Oh, are you  _kidding me_?!", says the voice behind the door, and Nick widens his eyes in a panic when he realizes the voice belongs to neither Schmidt or Cece.

"Oh my God.  _Sam_." Nick mutters under his breath, and then with the tray still in his hand, he races into Jess's room and gets her attention.

"Aww, Nick. Breakfast?", she asks him, and she's almost impressed for a second until he yells out, "SAM!" at her. 

"What do you mean, ' _SAM!_ '?", Jess asks. "Oh.  _Oh_. Is he -- For real?"

"He heard me, Jess. I'm a dead man. I'm too young to die, but I'm dead. He's gonna kill me and feed me to those rabid cats that hang outside of your place."

"You mean  _on my car_ ," she says, shaking her head at the fact. 

"That's not the point, Jessica! Get rid of him!"

"Oh, you did a  _perfect_ job getting rid of him yesterday at the wedding, Nick. Why don't you open the door and then kiss me again? Let him watch this time."

"Like I said: It takes two to tango. To kiss. It takes two to kiss, and you kissed me back!", he says, wiggling a finger at Jess accusingly. "Jess, why is that so hard for you to admit?"

She stands up and aggressively rips the tray out of Nick's arm, placing it down on her bed and stomping into the living room. Nick follows behind her, his hands in the pockets of his pajama pants and his eyes shifted to the floor. 

"Sam, hey, good -- good morning," Jess says with a gulp, swinging the door to her apartment open. Sam looks... you know... unimpressed. "I-I was going to call you," she lies.

"Yeah, right after you finished playing house with Nick, I bet," Sam says, narrowing his eyes at Nick, who's kind standing behind Jess like a statue. "Jess, what happened? Have you been seeing this dude all along? Am I wasting my time? I -- I thought we had something good, you know?"

Jess swallows thickly and takes a hand up to put it on Sam's shoulder. "We  _did_."

"But...", Sam intervenes. "There's always a 'but', Jess, and your 'but' has to do with Nick. C'mon."

Can't they all do this over some tea and a little Oprah? Why now, like this, in her doorway, while she's this hungover and this confused, and  _God_ , where is Winston when you need him? (He's a smooth talker who's helped Jess get out of one too many scenarios like these, believe it or not.)

Jess looks back at Nick, and the way he's looking at her is now burned into her brain. He almost looks a little desperate, as if he's yelling at her without actually yelling at her to just woman up and tell the truth. She owes him the truth, and she owes Sam the truth, and she owes the truth to herself, too.

(But she's  _Jess_ , and she's scared of feeling so hard, and it's nine in the morning and her tongue still tastes like tequila and she's  _scared_.)

"Fine, you know what, if you won't tell me, why don't I just ask Nick here to?", says Sam after a minute of Jess saying absolutely nothing. "Nick, before anything, you owe me an apology, man."

Nick's eyes widen and he goes, "Cool, yeah, cool, done", and then that's it. 

"That your apology?", Sam asks, snickering.

"Just -- Just say sorry, Nick," says Jess, nudging him on the arm. 

"You  _kissed_ my  _girlfriend_ ," Sam says bitterly. "A genuine 'I'm sorry' will suffice. I guess."

Nick huffs and looks at Jess, and he can't believe she's scared of this; of Sam and of him and of her feelings. He didn't think Jess was scared of anything, but that's because in his eyes, she's  _Jess_. ( _Jess_ being: Cool, confident, skilled, beautiful, sexy, unafraid, and many other adjectives meaning 'amazing'.)

"Fine. I'm sorry I k -- No."

"' _No_ '?", Sam repeats, his eyes like daggers on Nick's.

"I'm not sorry I kissed your girlfriend, man, okay? I'm just not."

Jess wants to gasp at Nick's bluntness, and Sam wants to kill him for it.

"First off: She wanted me to, or else she wouldn't have had such a hard time telling you about it. Second: My friend Winston is an idiot who should've set me up with Jess in the first place, not handed her off to you or freakin' Schmidt."

"You dated  _Schmidt_ too?! What is going _on_?!", Sam shouts in Jess's direction, and Jess just waves him off with a hand and mutters something about that 'not mattering because it's _Schmidt_ '.

"I've had a crush on Jess since the moment I met her, and maybe me doing something about it while she was seeing you was wrong, but maybe it was supposed to go like this, man."

Sam laughs bitterly under his breath and goes, "Yeah, okay, because I deserved to be cheated on."

"Ya' didn't," Nick says, and he means it. "If I know one thing about Jess, it's that after I kissed her she probably sat there and racked her brain about how much it was going to hurt you, because she's Jess and she cares about everyone."

"It's true," Jess says, lifting her pointer finger up in the air.

"Save it," Sam says, shaking his head. "Look, I shouldn't have gotten involved with all of... this. Winston's right; all of his friends  _are_ messy."

"He said that about us?!", Jess asks, widening her eyes in shock.

"Jess, c'mon, we  _are_ messy," Nick says, leveling a hand at her to signal the current situation they're all in. 

"Sam, have you and Jess ever talked about her hopes and dreams, man?"

Sam looks at Nick and rolls his eyes. "Um, no?"

"Have you ever sat with Jess on your couch until four, five o'clock in the morning with nothing but a blanket and some organic herbal tea bullshit, and you didn't even care because you liked her  _that_ much that you would've let her sit on your couch forever?"

Again: Sam looks at Nick and rolls his eyes. "Dude, I'm a doctor, I work crazy hours. I don't have  _forever_."

"Point made," Nick says simply, and then he turns to Jess. "I'm sorry if I ruined anything here for ya', Jess, but I think I might've saved you from Failed Winston Setup Number Two."

—

Sam leaves Jess's apartment and warns her to never call him again, that she's an 'idiot person', that she better not bake him 'I'm Sorry Brownies' or whatever weird crap girls like Jess bake for dudes when they've screwed up.

—

"Hey."

Nick's just finished using her shower, because they haven't showered since before the wedding yesterday (gross) and Jess puked on him a little in the elevator ride up last night (also gross).

Nick wraps his towel tighter around his torso and smiles over at her. "Hey, Jess. I'm sorry about everything. I know I screwed things up for you and Sam."

Jess sighs and steps into the bathroom, turning the faucet on and running her toothbrush underneath it. "You were right, Nick. My feelings for you are hard for me to admit because I'm -- I'm so used to getting hurt, and disappointed, and left."

"So you  _do_ like me," he says, stifling a laugh underneath his breath and wiggling his pointer finger at her.

She rolls her eyes and shoves him. "Shut up. Just say, 'Yay! I like you too!' or something; don't make it difficult."

"'Difficult' is my middle name, Jessica," he says. "But, 'yay! I like you too!'. Good?"

She finishes brushing her teeth and then pivots around to grab him by the wrist. "Would you really have let me sit on your couch forever?"

"For-ever," he says, smacking his lips together. "Well... Until I got tired, which was... fifteen minutes after you started talking, but..."

"Hey! I have a lot to say," she argues.

"I know," he says, smirking, and then he takes a hand and runs it down the small of her back. "I'm always gonna listen to ya', Jess."

She believes him. For the first time in forever she believes a guy who isn't Winston and it feels okay. Nick lets his towel fall down to the ground, and then he wiggles Jess out of her heart-patterned pajamas, and they fall to the floor, too.

"Are you sure?", Jess asks, and it's not that she doesn't want to, but they've been mutually open about their feelings for each other for... an hour? It's all so fast.

Nick tugs down on his lip and then picks Jess up, sliding her body down his torso. 

They don't even make it to the bedroom, and they're just about to start Round Two when Cece and Schmidt barge into the bathroom for a shower, and --

"Oh my God, my eyes, they buuuuurn! Nicholas, I never wanted to see your penis this way!"

"Oh my God! Jess! Is this happening?! Finally!"

—

"So I  _really_ screwed that one up, huh?", Winston asks, flabbergasted. He makes a mental note to scratch 'Matchmaking' off of his resume. 

It's been eight days and Jess has a boyfriend and it's Nick Miller and she's  _all in_ and whatever other crap couples promise each other to be.

Cece laughs and rubs Winston's back. "You can't be good at  _everything_ , Winston," she says.

"But I'm good at  _nothing_!: Puzzles, babysitting other people's pets for an extended period of time, and now  _matchmaking_."

"Hey, you sort of got it right," says Jess, leveling a hand at him. "You picked the right four people, you just --  _Schmidt_. How did you ever think I'd be good with  _Schmidt_?"

"Hey!", Cece warns, pointing a finger in Jess's direction. "That's still my boyfriend, and just because you hate his kimono doesn't mean I do. You should see what we do with it in bed."

"Cece, no!", Jess yells, covering her eyes.

"Aly has a kimono I've been dying to use, actually, so please, enlighten us."

"Don't," says Jess. "Please, don't."

"Fine, then  _you_ need to spill about what it's like to be a taken lady," Cece says, teasingly poking Jess on the arm.

Jess bites into her croissant and then watches Cece and Winston bite into theirs, and then she says, "It's fine.", all coolly.

"Just 'fine'. Yeah, okay. Jess, I've never seen you so...  _loved up_ before. We can't even say his name without you smiling," says Cece.

Jess smiles, right on cue, and no one even said Nick's name. "Fine. He's the best! Is that what you want to hear?", she asks.

Winston sets down his croissant and claps his hands together. "Well... yeah," he says. "Ooh, I am  _so_ singing at the wedding!"

"You can't sing, Winston," Cece says, palming her forehead. "Do we need to talk about that time you performed at my thirtieth birthday party again?"

"Okay, fine, but we  _do_ agree there's going to be a wedding, right?", he says, narrowing his eyes at Jess.

Jess pretends to be distracted by her chai tea, light ice, extra chai, extra soy milk, and then she shrugs a shoulder and goes, "Stop.", and then a second later, she says, "It's  _Nick_. He's... you know... the greatest."

—

Two years later, Winston does not sing at their wedding, because it's his fault they weren't matched up sooner and Jess and Nick will never let him forget.

"But I did, kind of sort of, match you two up," he says in his Best Man toast. "And I'm so glad you hated your first matches so much -- no offense, Cece and Schmidt -- that you found each other on your own, because you two are really something else."

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [New Girl: Cece Edition](https://archiveofourown.org/works/6782893) by [DreamsOfSleep](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DreamsOfSleep/pseuds/DreamsOfSleep)
  * [Phoenix](https://archiveofourown.org/works/6797446) by [DreamsOfSleep](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DreamsOfSleep/pseuds/DreamsOfSleep)




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